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.
Rep. Hill in 2015 resurrected the award first established in 1975 by former U.S. Sen. William Proxmire (D-WI), who issued bulletins announcing a monthly Golden Fleece Award winner consecutively for 13 years.
In re-establishing the Golden Fleece Award “to once again uncover and bring public attention to the wasteful spending across our federal government,” Rep. Hill said on the House floor during a May 20, 2015 speech, he planned to “highlight some of the most egregious examples of government waste of hard-working taxpayers’ dollars and shed new light on some of the rampant, unnecessary spending by our federal agencies.”
The SSA’s receipt of the May award is based on a 2016 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress showing that SSA overpaid beneficiaries almost $20 billion and permanently waived more than $2.4 billion in overpayment debt between FY 2005 and FY 2014, according to Rep. Hill’s letter.
The lawmaker also requested that Berryhill answer: “What steps has SSA taken since the 2016 GAO report to address this issue?”
In fact, the GAO has already answered that question in an April 2018 report, saying SSA hasn’t yet addressed this area of concern.
“To help prevent the loss of billions of dollars, SSA should take steps to prevent overpayments to beneficiaries of the Disability Insurance program and improper waivers of beneficiaries’ overpayment of debt,” according to the GAO report, “Annual Report: Additional Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial Benefits.”
“The United States is currently more than $20 trillion in debt, and our government agencies must be cognizant of this while spending taxpayer dollars,” he wrote.
Rep. Hill urged Berryhill to notify Congress “as soon as possible” with her answers and reminded her, “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.”