From a press release:
U.S. Rep. French Hill (R-AR) chastised the Social Security Administration (SSA) for reportedly overpaying Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) beneficiaries by billions of dollars for several years and then permanently waiving billions more in overpayment debt. And the congressman wants an update.
In a May 31 letter sent to SSA Acting Commissioner Nancy Berryhill, Rep. Hill requested that she provide responses to three questions, including the exact totals for what SSA has overpaid to SSDI beneficiaries and for waived overpayment debt from fiscal year (FY) 2014 to the present.
The congressman’s letter also served as official congressional notice to Berryhill that the SSA was receiving the most-recent Golden Fleece Award for its wasteful use of American taxpayers’ dollars. ...I've got a modest proposal. How about no overpayment waivers in Hill's district with Social Security giving out Hill's phone number to his constituents who want an explanation?
7 comments:
Mr. Hill is quoted as saying “Our federal agencies must be good stewards of our federal tax dollars, and I am committed to ensuring effective practices at our nation’s federal agencies.” Unfortunately, his party is not committed to funding the agency to have sufficient staff to do that. In basketball, a player gets credit for an assist when he sets up another player to score. Mr. Hill, you and your party mates, by underfunding agency operations for years, get an assist for this year's golden fleece award.
Seems rather straight forward, why so many OPs and why so many OP waivers. You are opposed to identifying problems and correcting them while protecting the trust fund? Interesting.
***Cue the haters in 3...2...1...
I like no waivers in Hill's district. Remember, many overpayments are on social security which the individual earned.
As a percentage of all benefits paid, overpayments are minuscule; but given the size of the program, even very small percentages yield megabucks in overpayments. My question for Rep. Hill is, "How much oversight and administration do you want to pay for?"
Here's a thought, Senator. Adequately fund SSA's IT so that we can get rid of COBOL-driven green screen DOS-style inputs for basic shit like CHANGING PEOPLE'S ADDRESSES, as well as more complex things like INPUTTING WAGES.
Adequately fund SSA's admin side so that people can be properly trained to make these inputs correctly.
Adequately fund SSA's personnel so that offices are staffed with enough people to make these inputs timely, before beneficiaries are overpaid.
Legislatively require agencies like the VA, IRS, and Department of Agriculture (food stamps) to automate the back-end sharing, so that we don't find out about the stuff that causes overpayments months later.
You want to yell at SSA, maybe you should get off your fat ass and do something on your end.
Hey 9:35
The reasons why there are so many OPs and OP Waivers are obvious to people who understand the system. One root of the problem is that Social Security has a very large number of complicated rules and the trend is towards more complexity. Want a sampler? Go through all the rules in the POMS or CFR for in-kind support and maintenance, income and resource deeming, and work incentives since those generate a lot of overpayments and even experts struggle with them. Then consider what you would expect to happen if you asked hundreds of thousands of elderly and/or disabled people to understand and follow those complicated rules and many more besides. Did you answer "a lot of overpayments?" Congratulations. A fair look also requires you to consider that there are many underpayments of benefits for the same reasons.
Do you think it's fair to blame those elderly and disabled people for not understanding and following rules they were likely never told, or may not have been capable of understanding even if someone did tell them? Most would say no.
Then ask what it would take to monitor and enforce all those very complicated rules for millions of claimants and beneficiaries. Clearly, you need a large number of highly trained employees which of course requires adequate funding. All that doesn't even touch on the fact that many people on SSI or disability benefits are so impoverished that it is not realistic or cost-effective to collect overpayments from them. Congress tends to tinker by adding a hodgepodge of new rules (especially in work incentives), which adds to the complexity, which of course makes the problem worse.
When someone's disability ends due to medical improvement they can request benefit continuation during the appeal process through to the ALJ decision. Since that may be a couple of years after the initial proposed cessation there will obviously be a large overpayment. The DO is supposed to grant a waiver of a slow repayment plan if the claimant shows he would have difficulty paying ordinary living expenses or if there was some reasonable basis for him to believe he was still disabled.
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