From WTRF:
A study has shown that on days when Social Security pays, gambling rates go up.
A West Virginia University doctoral student, Matt Mullis, has found concerning patterns in West Virginia’s gambling data.
One finding shows that senior citizens may be spending most of their Social Security income on gambling. …
Most?
From a report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General:
… The Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program provides benefits to wage earners and eligible family members in the event a wage earner retires, becomes disabled, or dies. Child benefits under this program include benefits for minor children, students, and disabled adult children.
SSA initially processes most disability claims through local SSA field offices and state disability determination services that make disability determinations for SSA.
We reviewed a random sample of 100 claims from a population of 5,237 child’s insurance benefits claims that were filed from January 2023 through November 2025 that SSA initially denied because it determined the claimants were not disabled.
Of the 100 initial claims we reviewed, SSA correctly denied 49 for child’s insurance benefits based on medical eligibility requirements. When SSA subsequently approved the 49 claims, it correctly paid the claimants. However, SSA did not correctly deny, pay, and/or document decisions for the remaining 51 claims.
SSA employees incorrectly denied 11 claims. Based on our sample, we estimate the Agency incorrectly denied about 600 claims.
SSA employees did not document whether they completed all required actions when they requested required forms orevidence from the claimants before they denied eight claims. Based on our sample, we estimate this occurred in about 450 claims.
SSA employees did not correctly pay benefits to 32 claimants after they subsequently found the claimants were disabled and approved their claims. Based on our sample, after SSA approved the claims, we estimate employees did not correctly pay about 1,100 claimants, resulting in underpayments of approximately $1.2 million. Additionally, based on our sample, we estimate SSA employees properly paid about 340 claimants; however, the Agency did not establish the correct dates they were entitled to Medicare benefits.
We could not determine why employees made these errors.
From a report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General:
… When SSA identifies an underpayment of $1 or more, it issues the underpayment to the recipient, or an eligible survivor if the recipient is deceased, after it offsets any outstanding overpayments, Interim Assistance reimbursements, and authorized representative fees.
For large underpayments, employees must conduct and document a pre-payment review before they release a payment.
We identified 2 populations: Population 1 comprised 2.5 million underpayments pending on the Supplemental Security Record as of September 2024 and Population 2 comprised 2.4 million underpayments SSA paid between
Of the 160 pending underpayments in Population 1, SSA paid 80 SSI recipients (50 percent) the underpayments they were due when required. However, SSA employees did not follow policy to ensure the SSA paid 69 recipients (43 percent) the underpayments they were due. The remaining 11 (7 percent) were incorrect underpayments that should be removed from the records.
Additionally, of the 80 underpayments for deceased recipients in Population 1, we identified 47 underpayments, totaling $22,861, that remained on SSA’s records even though they were not payable to anyone.
Of the 100 underpayments in Population 2, SSA paid 88 SSI recipients (88 percent) the underpayments they were due and conducted pre-payment reviews for them when required. We did not find evidence SSA employees followed policy and conducted
pre-payment reviews for the remaining 12 (12 percent) underpayments, as required. Of the 2.5 million underpayments that were pending as of September 2024, we estimate SSA did not pay 1.1 million underpayments, totaling about $291 million, that were owed to SSI recipients. …
A message from Social Security to attorneys and others who represent claimants (the crap at the end is some weird formatting from the original that doesn’t go away no matter what I do):
Recent Enhancements in Processing Centers: Advancing Service and Efficiency
Date:
Dear Colleague,
We are pleased to announce some important developments from Central Processing that further our commitment to efficient, responsive service for claimants and the representative community. These changes reflect ongoing efforts to optimize operations, strengthen communication, and deliver timely, policy-compliant outcomes.
A Good News Highlights:
Centralized Oversight and Organizational Realignment: This fiscal year, oversight of all eight processing centers (PCs), including Disability Operations and International Processing, has been unified under a new chief-level organization, Central Processing (CP). CP now also manages Earnings, Workload Support Units, and Field Office Support Units, which provide essential backend support to field offices and the National 800 Number. This realignment merges similar workload responsibilities, streamlines decision-making, and enhances customer service across the agency.
Expanded Representative Call Center (RCC) Services: Building on prior enhancements, the RCC now serves as a single point of contact for representatives with cases pending in any PC. Representatives can call the RCC at 877-626-6363, and calls are automatically routed to the appropriate PC based on claimant information. Technicians are available to assist with a range of inquiries, including pending cases and attorney fee payments.
The RCC contact information is available on the following pages:
https://www.ssa.gov/representation/pct_contact_info_under54.htm
https://www.ssa.gov/representation/pct_contact_info_54older.htm
We encourage your clients to create a my Social Security account, which enables them to manage their benefits and access a wide range of essential services online.
Please share this information with your members, colleagues, affiliates, and other interested parties. We appreciate your partnership and continued collaboration as we work together to enhance service delivery within our PCs.
Sincerely,
Mark D. Quinlan
Chief of Central Processing
From AL.com:
In May, the Social Security Administration announced it was switching the company that administers its Direct Express cards. Comerica Bank previously handled the program. It will now be handled by Fifth Third Bank, which merged with Comerica earlier this year.
The changeover started in June, though rollout will depend on when you started using your card.
New Direct Express card enrollees will automatically receive their cards from Fifth Third Bank. Existing account holders will receive their new cards later this year or early next year. Beneficiaries should continue to use their existing Comerica cards until they receive the new ones. Recipients will be notified with a letter before the cards are sent. …
From NBC Chicago:
… [L]ast summer Jo and Holly Howard visited the Social Security office in Woodstock. The good news: Jo Howard was issued a check for almost $55,000 [under the Social Security Fairness Act] and The bad news - she never got it. …
It turns out, just five days after the check was issued in June, it was cashed. According to the police report, the ‘female suspect, employed by Amazon inc’ was using an ID with Jo Howard’s information.
“We thought the case would be solved, that she would be prosecuted,” she stated.
According to the police report,there was even video of the suspect cashing the check at the bank. But the officer "could not open the encrypted file." That lead was quickly abandoned, and then Old Dominion Bank stopped responding to the police department, police stated.
“So the police just closed the case,” Holly Howard said. …
“I made seven trips to the Social Security office. Every time you see a different person, you get a different story,” she said.
On the seventh visit, Jo Howard said she was told to file a theft report with the U.S. Treasury Department. Now almost a year from the theft, she said the investigation is just ramping up. …
Does the Secret Service still investigate these cases? The Secret Service isn’t even in the Department of the Treasury. It’s in Homeland Security now. Has she even contracted the right agency? Doesn’t Social Security have an obligation to pay this woman now, regardless of the investigation? Whether the crook gets caught is irrelevant. Where is Social Security’s Office of Inspector General? Old Dominion stopped responding? No kidding. If they accepted a forged endorsement they’re the ones on the hook for this fraud. I remember that much about the U.C.C.
Please, no snarky remarks about the Social Security Fairness Act. If she’s owed the money, she’s owed the money.
From a report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General:
An SSA employee initiates a critical payment when an Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance beneficiary or representative payee alerts SSA of a critical case or special situation when SSA is not paying regular monthly benefits, additional benefits are due, or a beneficiary reports they did not receive a monthly benefit. These include dire need, court orders, legislative mandates, and preliminary and expedited payments. …
We reviewed a random sample of 175 critical payments from a population of 3,549 issued in Fiscal Year 2023 …
We estimate SSA employees accurately processed about 44,000 (62 percent) of the 70,980 critical payments and did not accurately process about 27,000 (38 percent)—making over 28,000 errors when they processed the payments. About 2,800 of these errors resulted in the payments being incorrectly documented on beneficiaries’ records. For the remaining errors, we estimate the following.
From Money.com:
It seemed too good to be true. A $60,000 deposit from the Social SecurityAdministration landed in a woman's bank account with no explanation, as if she had won the lottery without buying a ticket.
But is this a real windfall, or has she been caught up in a grand mistake? And more importantly, what should she do with the money? …
The woman who received the money is unemployed and receives Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), her 22-year-old child explained in the post. About three months prior, the mother's monthly SSDI payment doubled. The family was already waiting for an explanation of that increase before the $60,000 deposit arrived. …
"They said that every six months they were supposed to review her account and adjust if needed but never did that in the 23 years she was on disability," the post reads, adding that the representative also mentioned a back payment for an issue related to dependents. …
This highlights a long-standing problem at Social Security — the money usually arrives well before the explanation of the money. Sometimes no award certificate ever arrives.
From the Baltimore Sun:
Congressional Democrats are investigating whether Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano knew — and should have disclosed — that his company stood to benefit from a huge contract overseeing a debit card program serving millions of recipients of Social Security and other programs, The Baltimore Sun has learned.
The Senate Finance Committee’s Democratic staff, led by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, is exploring whether Bisignano knew during his confirmation procedures that the firm, Fiserv, had bid — or was planning to — on a pending 5-year Direct Express contract, which distributes government benefits to about 3.4 million Americans via prepaid cards, a committee spokesperson said.
Another Democrat, Connecticut Rep. John Larson, told The Sun that Bisignano’s “connection to Fiserv certainly raises questions about Treasury’s new contract. Especially as he moves to end paper checks for monthly benefits, which could push hundreds of thousands of Americans over to Direct Express, he has a responsibility to be transparent about any potential conflicts of interest.” …
The contract was awarded to Fifth Third, an Ohio-based bank, and began on Sept. 9, according to the company’s news release that day naming Money Network Financial, LLC as the program’s manager. Money Network Financial is a subsidiary of Fiserv, the company Bisignano headed as chairman and CEO until stepping down on May 6 to take over the federal agency. ….
From Follow-up on Dually Entitled Beneficiaries and Family Maximum Provisions, a report by Social Security’s Inspector General:
… This is a follow up to our 2014 audit of the Adjustment of Monthly Benefits Under the Family Maximum Provisions. For our current audit, we identified 23,603 Social Security records with dually entitled beneficiaries and at least 2 other beneficiaries who had a date of entitlement of May 2013 or later and were in current pay status as of May 2023. We selected a random sample of 225 records for review. …
We estimate SSA correctly adjusted benefits in accordance with the family maximum provisions for 15,211 of the 23,603 wage earners’ records in our population (64 percent); however, SSA improperly paid approximately $114 million to spouses and children on 8,392 wage earners’ records (36 percent). …
From CBS News:
The Social Security Administration said it will continue issuing paper checks to the retirement program's beneficiaries, backing away from a previously announced plan to switch all payments to electronic deposits after Sept. 30.
On Wednesday, the Social Security Administration told CBS MoneyWatch it would continue issuing paper checks for beneficiaries, including recipients of retirement and disability benefits, who have no other means of getting payments. But the program will also emphasize the advantages of electronic transfers to its roughly 70 million beneficiaries in an effort to encourage check recipients to switch, a Social Security spokesperson added. ...
I've seen this same scenario play out at least a couple of times before.
From Emergency Message EM-25040 released yesterday:
… Effective immediately, the agency will comply with the relevant legal authorities in initial claims by removing references to an option to receive a paper check and directing people who insist on a paper check to apply to Treasury for a waiver.In compliance with the law and enforced by the recently released EO, the following changes supersede current instructions in GN 02402.001and GN 02402.005 and are effective as of the date of this publication.1. Updates to GN 02402.001
a. Section C bullet 4 is no longer applicable and has been removed. Effective immediately, technicians should no longer offer a temporary paper check option while waiting for Treasury contact regarding enrollment in electronic funds transfer (EFT) .b. Section C bullet 5 should read:“As of March 1, 2013, Title II beneficiaries and Title XVI recipients must select a form of electronic payment or if they allege a qualifying exemption, then apply for a waiver. Treasury is responsible for reviewing the request and making a determination. Instruct the individual to contact the U.S. Treasury Electronic Payment Solution Center at 1-800-967-5042. Currently, SSA cannot accept a waiver application or approve a waiver request. Treasury will contact the individuals directly once they make a determination.”
c. Additionally, field offices are no longer required to maintain a list of financial institutions in their servicing area. …
This will be much harder to implement than it sounds.
From Newsweek:
Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley is warning that benefit payments could soon be delayed for millions of Americans, citing deep staffing cuts and internal chaos at the Social Security Administration (SSA) under the Trump administration.
Speaking at a public forum in Long Island on Monday, O'Malley said he believes an interruption in payments could be imminent.
"I truly believe there's going to be some interruption of benefits for some period of time, and I believe that will probably happen in the very near future," O'Malley said, according to Long Island Press. "I've never hoped I was wrong so much in my life." …
From David Weaver writing for The Hill:
… The start-up administrative costs of the Social Security Fairness Act [which eliminated the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset] are plausibly about $200 million. When Congress was considering the full-year continuing resolution in March, it simply chose not to provide the Social Security Administration with sufficient funding to implement the law. As a result, Congress has created a zero-sum environment at the agency: additional service to one group means less service to another.
In the months since enactment of the SSFA, the Social Security Administration has taken an additional 146,000 new benefit applications related to the new law. That means 146,000 other Americans did not have their applications considered. Additionally, the agency has had to field 450,000 calls (6,000-7,000 per day) from the public requiring agency staff to explain the new law and resolve benefit problems. That means 450,000 other Americans did not get their Social Security problems resolved.Most alarmingly, the agency’s automation efforts for retroactive payments fell short. Social Security indicated that automation would result in these payments being deposited in bank accounts “by the end of March.” After its automation runs in March, however, there were still 500,000 to 700,000 cases to be processed. These will have to be handled manually over time. …The Social Security Administration plans to prioritize this manual workload, but all that means is that up to 700,000 other Americans in the agency’s very large payment backlog will not have their benefit payments processed. …
From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General:
Objective
To determine whether employees submitted and processed Manager-to-Manager (M2M) requests in accordance with Social Security Administration (SSA) policy.
Background
When a field office (FO), processing center (PC), or teleservice center employee identifies a critical issue for a beneficiary that requires another office’s action, managers can expedite action for the beneficiary by initiating an M2M request. Managers should only use M2M for high priority requests, such as beneficiaries who have terminal illnesses; made homicidal, suicidal, or potentially violent behavior threats; or are in dire need situations, such as facing eviction or homelessness.
Given the critical nature of M2M requests, FO and PC employees must address them within 5-business days or provide an interim reply to the requesting manager explaining the delay.
We reviewed a random sample of 100 M2M requests: 50 in a “resolved” status from June 1, 2021 through June 1, 2023 and 50 in a “pending” status as of June 1, 2023.Results
SSA employees generally submitted M2M requests according to SSA policy; however, they did not always follow policy when they processed M2M requests. Of the 100 M2M requests we sampled, FO and PC employees did not process 57 requests according to policy.
For 48 requests, FO and PC employees did not process them timely, resulting in delays in employees addressing critical issues and beneficiaries waiting weeks or months to receive the benefits they were due.
For 9 requests, PC employees placed them in a “resolved” status in the M2M application before completing all necessary actions to address the requests.
SSA managers provided reasons for delays, and we identified control weaknesses that contributed to delays, such as: (1) case complexity; (2) insufficient communication between offices, including no notifications in the M2M application when employees take action on requests; and (3) the absence of controls that prevent employees from prematurely closing M2M requests. ...
This is the sort of thing that drives me and other Social Security attorneys crazy We can't get problems resolved.
I missed this one. Last week Trump ordered an end to Treasury issued paper checks as of September 30 of this year.
I think it's better than 95% of Social Security claimants who receive their benefits by direct deposit now but there are those who still need paper checks. One important group who still need paper checks are claimants who have lacked the funds to keep a bank account open while they wait months and years for their Social Security disability claims to be approved. They're only too happy to receive their payments by direct deposits once they have money to put in an account but not for that first check or two.
Yes, I know there are benefit cards but the fees on those are ridiculous. More important, most folks still have a bank account when they file their Social Security disability claim but later have to close the bank account because they're broke so they won't be set up for a benefit card.
We'll see how this plays out. In theory, they aren't supposed to be paper checks even now but circumstances on the ground don't match up with what armchair theorists think possible. A little leeway is needed.
Trump’s Commerce Secretary says that if Social Security payments don’t get paid that the ones who would complain the most are “fraudsters.”
From CNBC:
Social Security has never missed a benefit payment since the program first began sending individuals monthly benefits more than eight decades ago.
But the recent actions at the U.S. Social Security Administration by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency are putting monthly benefit checks for more than 72.5 million Americans at risk, former commissioner and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley told CNBC.com.
“Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits,” O’Malley said. “I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.”
For the record, I’m pretty sure that O’Malley is wrong on the threat of interrupted benefits. Social Security does not initiate payment of benefits nor does it even maintain the database of those who should be paid. The Department of the Treasury does that. Social Security just gives Treasury new info — people to be added or subtracted from the list. Treasury does the rest. So unless Treasury is itself terribly affected they will continue to make the payments. It’s just that they may be making less accurate payments including, ironically, paying some dead people who should have been cut off benefits.
I've sorta asked the question before but never received what I thought was a definitive answer. To what extent will the elimination of WEP/GPO require manual recomputations? How much of this can be done through IT? These are important questions.
If there will be manual recomputations, I'm going to be upset if they take priority over Social Security straightening out my clients' windfall offsets and workers compensation offsets and other such routine issues. The WEP/GPO people can take their turn in line like everybody else. If it takes six months or longer, and it will if these folks aren't granted priority, welcome to the reality of what the Social Security Administration is today.
From WKBN:
Some Ohio seniors say they are getting their Social Security payments garnished for COVID-19 Small Business Administration (SBA) loans they say they did not take out.
Congressman Michael Rulli, R-6th District, is looking into the problem since he has learned of at least four cases of this happening to seniors in his district. His team said they are looking into these individual cases and have an issue with the SBA putting the burden of proof on seniors instead of the SBA, who Rulli accuses of having a “lackluster handling” of identity theft with the program.
Rulli said one message to his office involved a constituent who said that two SBA loans were fraudulently taken out in their name in 2021. That person said they provided SBA with the documents they requested, such as a police report and identification, in August 2024 and has yet to receive a response. …
I don’t know what the process is like at SBA but there’s no way to contest this sort of thing at Social Security.
