From a press release issued by Social Security on March 20 of this year:
Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley today announced he is taking four vital steps to immediately address overpayment issues customers and the agency have experienced. ...
Our deeper understanding of the complexities of this problem has set us on the following course of action:
- Starting next Monday, March 25, we will be ceasing the heavy-handed practice of intercepting 100 percent of an overpaid beneficiary's monthly Social Security benefit by default if they fail to respond to our demand for repayment. Moving forward, we will now use a much more reasonable default withholding rate of 10 percent of monthly benefits — similar to the current rate in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program.
- We will be reframing our guidance and procedures so that the burden of proof shifts away from the claimant in determining whether there is any evidence that the claimant was at fault in causing the overpayment.
- For the vast majority of beneficiaries who request to work out a repayment plan, we recently changed our policy so that we will approve repayment plans of up to 60 months. To qualify, Social Security beneficiaries would only need to provide a verbal summary of their income, resources, and expenses, and recipients of the means-tested SSI program would not need to provide even this summary. This change extended this easier repayment option by an additional two years (from 36 to 60 months).
- And finally, we will be making it much easier for overpaid beneficiaries to request a waiver of repayment, in the event they believe themselves to have been without any fault and/or without the ability to repay.
This has all been implemented via an Emergency Message and changes in the agency's POMS manual. Social Security says it has reduced the number of people affected by withholding the entire monthly check from 46,000 to 7,000. The problem is that none of these changes have the force and effect of law, as a regulation would. Everything O'Malley has done on overpayments could be easily undone by a simple memo. Regulations can be amended but the process takes time. It's much less likely to be done. Maybe the agency was working on regs and didn't get finished. Maybe it was thought that a subsequent administration wouldn't change this. Maybe they won't but I wouldn't be surprised if this one does. Have you noticed that the incoming administration seems a little bloody-minded?
One other thing that O'Malley talked about was a statute of limitations on the collection of overpayments. I thought he could have done this by a regulation but, apparently, his agency eventually decided that Congress would have to amend the statutes, which, of course, is impossible.
You're right of course, but I have a hard time imagining an incoming COSS who would be enough of a political masochist to bring back 100% withholding. ...increasing to 25% though...?
ReplyDeleteAlthough these changes are very worthy of consideration it seems to give credence to Republican deep state belief. Administrators, not lawmakers, changing the rules.
ReplyDeleteLots of things are written in sand and will unfortunately change with the incoming administration. For example, there will be a big push to end remote work for federal employees.
ReplyDelete"Vivek Ramaswamy's 'jackhammer and chain saw' plan to force federal workers back into the office"
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/ramaswamys-jackhammer-chain-saw-plan-force-federal-workers-back-office-rcna180732
Full withholding of overpayments is rather drastic. But 10% is too low. The advantage of full withholding was it got the claimant's attention right away. 25% seems more reasonable.
ReplyDeleteWhen you only get $943 a month $94 is a whole lot of money
DeleteYeah, that's true, but the change gave people the right to happily accept 10% for life. Some people with large overpayments may just be sitting on substantial resources. In those situations, a 10% withholding is akin to the long sought after free lunch. We shouldn't so willingly give people the right to a no interest government loan.
DeleteYes, it would have been nice to have these policy changes written into the regulations so they can't be easily changed. But O'Malley really didn't have time to put them into regs.
ReplyDeleteAnd that’s the problem. The regulations require 100% withholding as the default rule. O’Malley chose to ignore the regulations, and take a shortcut that can easily be undone. If he wanted the change to stick, or at least be a lot harder to undo, he should have prioritized the needed regulatory changes. There was time to do that if he had the political will to do it the right way.
Delete11:18 PM has no concept of regulatory time.
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ReplyDeleteWhat I am seeing here is that a lot of people on this blog have no clue how overpayments happen and want to punish people for the OP. SSI kids with a working parent are almost ALWAYS in OP. Those months with three pay periods make a mess. Low staffing numbers means SSI reported income sometimes only gets accounted to the claim quarterly. You can be over $2000 in OP and not even know it. So, how about we let your creditors take 100% or 25% of your pay for an error that you did not cause when you did everything right. Yeah you wouldnt care for that very much would you.
ReplyDeleteWell, these overpayment changes were for beneficiarys of Social Security benefits not recipients of SSI. SSI recipients already had repayments that allowed for a maximum of 10 percent withholding or as little as $10 per month. We are talking about overpayments for the part of society ranging from dirt poor to wealthy. That's the problem with this liberal application allowing for a simple 10 percent withholding. Fault often applies and this generous new provision allows some people a gift of a very favorable repayment rate. It's ignorant is what it is. The policy assumes all people need a break and that SSA is likely to have hosed people. That's simply not the case. This was a gross overreaction to a 60 minutes episode.
ReplyDeleteAhh, even lawyers know not everything :) Any idea how long, and how many hoops a new or revised reg takes to get from idea to completion? Ranges from a lot and too long to OMG, how many years has this been in process. Internal discussions, then OMB and maybe WH, and getting OK to publish, get and resolve comments, revise, etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for lawmakers making teh rules, there isn't a lawmaker on earth who wants to live in teh minutae of agency rules and regs. These things are deferred to teh Agencies on purpose by Congress because lawmakers want nothing to do with it until they do.
Really 25%. You have no idea how it that would work for low income folks. Living on say even 2000 a month total. Too high for Medicaid or cost sharing. Try losing 25% of that and not suffering real hardship. The regs do not require a default of 100% in T.2 cases. WRONG. They permit but do not require. There was insufficient time to "codify" in regs. And yes, a new Commissioner or Acting Commissioner could undo if they chose.
ReplyDelete25% is less of a burden to start with than 100% has been. Low income people could always request a lower repayment amount. 10% may be too much for some. Not all overpayments are made to low income people. Many have significant other income or assets that would allow repayment in full.
DeleteMany are already living on the economic margins of existence. 25% is too harsh.
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