Social Security's Improper Payment Exchange Is Overdue, Lawmakers Say

In FY 2021, Supplemental Security Insurance (SSI) made more than $4 billion in overpayments, the lawmakers state.

“As you are well aware, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is the steward of the federal government’s largest expenditure of taxpayer dollars, responsible for managing over $1 trillion in payments to roughly 70 million beneficiaries annually. With a program this size, getting even a small number of payments wrong, whether overpaying or underpaying, can result in billions of dollars of improper payments,” the lawmakers wrote.

“Resolving an improper payment once it’s occurred not only adds to the SSA’s workloads, but more importantly, can be unduly burdensome for a beneficiary. It is therefore imperative that the SSA fully utilize the authorities granted by Congress to limit improper payments before they occur.”

PIE Concerns

Mary Johnson, Social Security and Medicare policy analyst for The Senior Citizens League, told ThinkAdvisor Monday in an email that while the Senior Citizens League “strongly advocates for measures to reduce fraud, waste and improper payments, measures and initiatives such as this [PIE] require Administrative funding, which DOES NOT come out of the Social Security Trust Fund — it comes out of the general federal budget which is subject to congressional negotiations.”

The question ”is whether this ADMINISTRATIVE [PIE] program was ever funded in the first place,” Johnson said. “I suspect there may have been an issue with that funding. What we do know is that the Social Security Administration’s funding has been repeatedly curtailed in recent years and that has severely impacted customer service.”

In 2015, Johnson added, “there was also considerable concern over privacy issues with this [PIE] program.”