There is a report that Arizona governor Jan Brewer has been under investigation for Social Security fraud. Let me hasten to say that the report suggests nothing more to me than an overpayment. The situation is that Governor Brewer's son, Ron, is severely mentally ill. Ron's father died. Ron started receiving disabled adult child benefits on his father's account. Governor Brewer was made his representative payee. In 1989 Ron was found not guilty of kidnapping and sexual assault by reason of insanity. He was sent to a state psychiatric hospital. In 1995 the Social Security Act was changed to make individuals confined to a psychiatric hospital after being found not guilty by reason of insanity ineligible for benefits. This made Ron ineligible for Social Security benefits but Governor Brewer never informed Social Security. Ron was overpaid by $75,000.
Anyone want to put Governor Brewer in jail for being unaware of an obscure change in the Social Security Act? I don't think so but an Arizona paper says that Social Security's Inspector General has investigated and has presented the case to the Department of Justice which seems uninterested in prosecuting. The newspaper seem obsessive about pursuing this matter.
A few points here:
- Republicans in Congress are eager to investigate Social Security overpayments. They imply that overpayments are due to rampant fraud at Social Security. They want aggressive action to root out this fraud and to punish the wrongdoers. As this case shows, plenty of Social Security's overpayments are due to the complexity of the programs the agency is administering. These overpayments happen to Republicans as well as Democrats.
- Investigating routine overpayments as if they were fraud is a waste of money and would harass a lot of honorable people, many of them Republicans.
- When they write about mental illness, many Republicans like to put the term "mental illness" in quotation marks. I doubt that Governor Brewer does this. I would wish a chronically mentally ill child on people who do this but that would be too cruel a punishment.
7 comments:
actually, I would like to investigate this person for fraud. They may not have been aware of the law...but I have yet to hear a court find that ignorance of the law is a valid defense. She should pay back what was not deserved. Otherwise, prepare to be charged.
The poster above is conflating the fact that an overpayment occurred versus the mens rea required to support a fraud conviction. Ignorance of the law is most certainly a defense if the basis of the criminal charge is intentional failure to report something the person knew must be reported.
That's an entirely different issue than the requirement that the overpayment be repaid.
Gov. pay up!
I think SSA can make a case that there were envelope stuffer and other notice to the RepPayee. Also, I suspect that the elected governor has a background in handling business and money -- not the poorly educated, unskilled, marginal English person commonly interviewd in the FO.
Come on Gov., pay up.
One thing Governor Brewer can count on is never receiving a Social Security check for the rest of her life. Whether she was "at fault" or not, I guarantee she will be subjected to SSA's Kafkaesque overpayment collection procedures when she files for her own benefits.
SSA has the memory of an elephant when it comes to collecting overpayments, and if you have the ability to repay an overpayment, they don't care whether you were at fault in causing it.
Knowing SSA as well as I do, their rules are the rules, Jan should just pay up and It will go away, I'm sure She can afford It, She's a Governor of Aridzona afterall, maybe she could dig up 41.5oz of gold, nah She might break a nail.
1. That 1995 shouldn't exist.
2. Even if it does exist, it shouldn't apply ex post facto.
3. SSA needs to be able to find people's criminal records on its own.
4. People Who Capitalize Sentences Like This Are Insane.
5. Jan Brewer needs to go down for a lot of reasons, but going after her retarded son doesn't seem like a politically smart move.
To me, the only person who looks like the bad guy here is SSA.
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