Social Security Offices To Be Closed To Public On Friday

     Social Security has just announced via its Twitter feed that its offices will be closed to the public on Friday. I'm not aware of any prior announcement. In recent years, Social Security has completely closed its offices on the Friday after Thanksgiving. That wasn't done this year, probably because of the government shutdown in October.

Social Security Gets A/A For Plain Writing

     The Center for Plain Writing is giving the Social Security Administration a grade of A/A for plain writing, higher than any other agency. The first A is for following the requirements of the Plain Writing Act and the second A is for following its spirit.

Distilling The Right Wing's Frustration Over Social Security Into One Title

     Title of a blog post by Gary Galles of the Ludwig von Mises Institute: Killing The "We Paid Our Taxes; We Earned Our Benefits" Social Security Ponzi Meme.

Gotta Collect Those Overpayments

     From The Missoulian:

A Corvallis man was floored last week when he received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying he has to pay nearly $2,000 by Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, due to a clerical error nearly 40 years ago.

Rudolph Weiglein said he was notified by the SSA that the agency had overpaid him on a claim, and he needs to pay back $1,995 to the government.

“At first, I thought for sure somebody stole my ID or my Social Security number or something,” he explained. “Because I didn’t have any claims with Social Security. So I called them and it turns out it was from when my father died in 1965 and my mother received survivor benefits.”

Weiglein said he was 11 years old when his father passed away, and he didn’t have any recollection of getting survivor benefits.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I talked to a guy at the SSA and I said, ‘Is this a joke?’ And he said, ‘No, it stays with you.’ He didn’t break it down or nothing. I can’t believe they are trying to collect an overpayment from almost 40 years ago. I don’t have any records from back then.” ...

     If you think it is a good idea that there is no statute of limitations on Social Security overpayments, how do you expect Mr. Weiglein to defend himself, to argue that he wasn't overpaid 40 years ago? It's more than possible that there wasn't really an overpayment back then. If there was an overpayment, Social Security probably can't explain how it happened. Is it fair to seize a person's benefits today to collect a 40 year old overpayment when neither the Social Security Administration nor the claimant involved has any idea how the overpayment got recorded in Social Security's records so long ago?

Interim Assistance Reimbursement NPRM

     From a Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) posted in the Federal Register today:

We reimburse States that provide interim assistance to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) claimants under our interim assistance reimbursement (IAR) program. We provide this reimbursement from the SSI recipient's initial retroactive SSI payment. On November 20, 2010, we began using an electronic Interim Assistance Reimbursement system (eIAR) to streamline the way we process reimbursements to the States. The eIAR process replaced our prior paper-based process with an electronic one, and greatly reduced our and the State's involvement in manually processing IAR cases. This electronic system did not change the amount of payments we make to States and SSI recipients. We propose to revise our rules about how we administer the IAR process to reflect the electronic process. We also made minor language changes and reorganized the sections for clarity.

What?

     From a notice to appear in the Federal Register tomorrow:

Under our current, long-standing policy, we do not purchase genetic testing to evaluate disability. However, we do consider all evidence in the record, including genetic testing and other genetic medical evidence, when we make a determination or decision of whether you are disabled. We are requesting information regarding how we should consider genetic information in the disability decision process and what issues we should consider. ... 

To submit your ideas and comments, please go to http://www.ssa- disabilityideas.ideascale.com and go to the Campaign entitled "Genetic Information".

     The link given in the notice isn't working.
     Obviously, if there is genetic testing that shows that a disability claimant has a genetic disorder, that evidence should be considered. Genetic testing may be able to show that a person has a propensity to develop some disorder in the future but that's in the future and isn't too relevant to a disability claim today. Is there something else they're getting at here?

No Statute Of Limitations On Overpayments

     From the Contra Costa Times:

For Vietnam War veteran Thomas Testerman, a letter he recently received from the Defense Department was a reminder of the mistreatment his generation of soldiers faced.

Landing in his mailbox two days before Veterans Day, the letter informed him that he owes nearly $500 because of checks the Social Security Administration mistakenly sent him in 1972. If Testerman does not pay or dispute the bill, the letter stated, deductions from his monthly military retirement checks will begin just days before Christmas.

     I have posted this sort of story before. Every time I do, I get comments which say, in effect, "Death to all who defraud Social Security!"  I find this bloodthirstyness shocking. Do they really believe the government should be vengeful? I wonder if these people know that many Social Security overpayments are due to mistakes made by the Social Security Administration itself. That was almost certainly the case here as the rest of the article makes clear.
     I know this man can almost certainly get his overpayment waived but he doesn't know where to turn.
     Isn't it time for a reasonable statute of limitations on non-fraudulent Social Security overpayments? Five years? Ten years? Twenty years? Thirty years?

Getting Hosed By COLA

     Danny Vinik at Business Insider argues that Social Security recipients are getting hosed by the Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA) even without chained CPI. He thinks Congress should require the use of the CPI-E (with E standing for Elderly) for the COLA instead of the measure being used now, CPI-W. The CPI-E would result in significantly higher benefits for those staying on Social Security benefits for an extended period of time.