It's worse than that. This is an observation, is all it is. I'm not throwing stones at anybody. Not only was it cut in half in 1995 arbitrarily to balance the budget, but one would think, then, a few years later it would have been reinstated because the budget was balanced. That didn't happen. But the worst is that it wasn't indexed after that, and that $12,000 today is about $8,000 in today's dollars. It's paltry. Somebody who dies with $9,000 is ineligible in terms of 1995 dollars, so it's an insult. That's the way I see it. As I said, it's just an observation; it's a rational observation. That's what happened. It was cut in half arbitrarily, never reinstated, and not even indexed. It's an insult.
On April 3rd, 2014. See this statement in context.