No link – the affirmative doesn’t require an increase in taxes. SSI is funded by general tax revenue – and even if they win the tax debate, it’s non-unique – PR already pays SS payroll taxes.

Rationale #1: Federal Income Tax. The federal government has argued in both cases that the fact that Puerto Rican residents only pay federal income tax on certain sources of income provides a rational basis from excluding them from SSI, SNAP, and the Medicare subsidies.244 That’s true: residents of Puerto Rico do not pay federal income tax on most types of income.245 Unlike other Social Security benefits which are paid for through payroll taxes (taxes that Puerto Ricans pay), SSI is paid for by general tax revenue, includ ing income tax receipts.246 Yet, while the Supreme Court in Rosario states that Puerto Ricans “do not contribute to the federal treasury,” recent tax re- ceipts suggest otherwise.247 Puerto Rico contributes roughly $4 billion in an- nual tax revenue to the federal government, exceeding the contribution of several states.248

More importantly, this is a confused justification for excluding any group of Americans from SSI. As a means-tested program, SSI’s eligibility rules are not based on past or future federal tax payments. SSI is a program that only kicks in when an applicant has been shown to have insufficient work history to qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance and has little or no income.249 The idea that Congress could use a logic of contributory in- surance to justify a noncontributory (i.e., means-tested) program is odd.250 The same is true for SNAP. No other group of Americans are excluded from SNAP because they do not pay income taxes. While it is difficult to find na- tional data on tax receipts by these recipients, it is highly unlikely that many Americans who receive SNAP, SSI, or Medicare Part D have any federal in- come tax liability.251 As the First Circuit noted, an individual cannot have more than $8,796 in countable annual income to receive SSI, which is signif- icantly less than the standard deduction of $12,400 for single tax filers, let alone for the blind and elderly.252 Perhaps that is why there is no other case where the federal government has defended its exclusion of a group of peo- ple from a welfare program on the basis of federal tax contributions.253