ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — A policy change by Social Security reverses the most significant action taken following our reporting on Social Security overpayments.
This change means instead of defaulting to withholding 10% of a person’s monthly check to recoup an overpayment, the SSA will go back to withholding 100% - basically stopping people’s Social Security benefits until the alleged debt is recovered.
9 Investigates, along with COX Media Group and KFF Health News, have been reporting on the SSA for a year and a half, starting with those overpayments and the effects on the most vulnerable—our seniors and those with disabilities.
This change will affect the OASDI program—retirement, survivor’s, and disability benefits—which, according to our FOIA reporting, is about 1 million people each year. In all, roughly 69 million Americans currently get OASDI, commonly referred to as social security payments.
That includes Patrica Ward. The government agency said she owes more than $49,000 in overpayments, and her situation is very complicated. But she said it wasn’t her fault, “The whole mistake is on their side, and it’s because they didn’t follow their own procedure.” And she’s been fighting to make it all right. In the meantime, she said they told her it was just a temporary pause on her checks, and she is waiting to see if and when she will be reinstated, but now, with the new change at SSA, it’s unclear.
In a press release, the acting commissioner said, “We have the significant responsibility to be good stewards of the trust funds for the American people,”
Lee Dudek adds, “It’s our duty to revise the overpayment repayment policy back to full withholding, as it was during the Obama administration and the first Trump administration, to properly safeguard taxpayer funds.”
Attorney Jen Burdick, who works with clients dealing with overpayments, said she is sad to see this reinstated. Burdick said, “If you think we’re not saying you shouldn’t collect money that people aren’t entitled to, but allowing people doing a smaller deduction as a default 10% gives people, you know, puts them on notice there might be a problem, but also allows them to have the space and time to try to resolve it” adding, “And taking that away is just it’s alarming. People are going to be hurt. Some people may die. People will lose their houses. I mean, this is a cruel policy.
Congressman Darren Soto said something could be done to change it. Channel 9 asked Soto what Soto how Congress might approach the SSA situation moving forward.
Channel 9: “The Social Security Administration made the decision now. Is there anything Congress can do, do you think, to have this conversation and to try to get something done?”
Soto: “So one we could push back in the Ways and Means Committee, which has oversight over Social Security. In addition, I know they’ll be multi-member letters coming around, and then a lot is going to come to a head this week with the continuing resolution. You know, we’ll see if the Republicans could get it done by themselves on the floor that historically haven’t,”
Channel 9: “And so that’ll allow Democrats to be able to negotiate certain things? And this might be one of them?”
Soto: “Yeah.”
Channel 9: “Could you use that as a bargaining chip?”
Soto: “It could be especially, you know, we care about the most vulnerable. And when I think of seniors and some folks, you know, their memories are going, they’re not exactly absolutely sure that they owe money back to the government. And so we need to do it in a way that respects a lot of these folks in their golden years and make sure that we don’t put them in destitute because of an error of the government.”
Channel 9 has reached out to our Republican lawmakers here in Florida, and we are still waiting to hear back.
The SSI program is not part of what was announced Friday so as of now, that will still default to 10% withholding.
We know from our prior reporting and SSA inspector general reports and audits that there’s a very low occurrence of fraud, and overpayments usually result from innocent mistakes on the part of the beneficiary in reporting their financials - or mistakes on the part of the agency in calculating what to pay people.
It often takes years for the agency to catch an overpayment – and many months to resolve them when challenged.
People can file for a waiver or an appeal if they think an overpayment was a mistake on the part of the agency and that should stop the clawback of 100% until it’s resolved.
On another note, The SSA was already facing an extreme staffing shortage, which caused long wait times at offices and holds times on the 800# phone line.
Now, SSA is cutting thousands more staff positions, which is expected to make that situation even worse.
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