Free Republic

The Social Security Administration announced Monday it is suspending a controversial program that goes after adult children of deceased taxpayers who the government claims were recipients of overpayments more than a decade ago. Acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn W. Colvin said she has directed an immediate halt to the three-year-old program while the agency does a review. The controversial program seized tax refunds in an effort to recoup the funds. The move to stop the program came after many of the recipients and members of Congress complained to the federal agency.

When I say “debts,” I don’t mean loans that the parents willingly sought from SSA. It would be bad enough to hold a kid responsible for that (since when are children responsible for their parents’ obligations?), but at least it would have been voluntarily incurred by mom/dad. The “debts” here are overpayments of Social Security benefits, the product of SSA’s own errors. The parents who received them might not have even realized they were getting money they weren’t supposed to have. And now, somehow, it’s junior’s problem. But wait. It gets worse. When [Mary] Grice was 4, back in 1960,...

The Social Security Disability Insurance program is in big trouble. In 2016, the program's trust fund is expected to run out of money. When that happens, there will be "large across-the-board cuts for all beneficiaries," warn James Lankford, the Republican chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees entitlements, and Jackie Speier, the subcommittee's ranking Democrat. Those cuts will be painful for the "truly disabled," whom the system originally was designed to serve. Washington has a choice to make: provide for the truly disabled or the newly disabled. The definition of disability was expanded to include mental disorders, such as anxiety...

The Washington Post reports that hundreds of thousands of taxpayers who are expecting refunds this month are instead getting letters informing them that because of a debt they never knew about — often a debt incurred by their parents — the government has confiscated their check. http://m.washingtonpost.com/politics/social-security-treasury-target-hundreds-of-thousands-of-taxpayers-for-parents-old-debts/2014/04/10/74ac8eae-bf4d-11e3-bcec-b71ee10e9bc3_story.html?tid=HP_more

When I say “debts,� I don’t mean loans that the parents willingly sought from SSA. It would be bad enough to hold a kid responsible for that (since when are children responsible for their parents’ obligations?), but at least it would have been voluntarily incurred by mom/dad. The “debts� here are overpayments of Social Security benefits, the product of SSA’s own errors. The parents who received them might not have even realized they were getting money they weren’t supposed to have. And now, somehow, it’s junior’s problem.But wait. It gets worse. When [Mary] Grice was 4, back in 1960, her...

After years of lefty rhetoric about how even the smallest ID requirement at the polls is some sort of pogrom against minority voters and the poor, I … did not see this coming.But maybe I should have. Per some polls, support for voter ID reaches 80+ percent. Maybe Bill’s already thinking about purple states in 2016. With 34 states now requiring some form of identification at the polls, former president Bill Clinton and civil rights leader Andrew Young on Wednesday endorsed the idea of adding photos to Social Security cards as a way to prevent voter suppression…Clinton and Young, a...

Their golden years aren’t looking so golden. A mere 6 percent of the so-called millennial generation think they will receive the same level of Social Security benefits as current retirees, according to a study recently released by the Pew Research Center. It is hard to decide the appropriate reaction to this finding. On one hand, I am relieved that the vast majority of this generation understands that there is little hope Social Security will be around for their retirement — regardless of how much they pay in taxes. On the other hand, I am incredulous that 6 percent of this...

The Republican Party is currently trying to sort out an internal battle between its dwindling stock of moderates who are occasionally willing to work with Democrats, and its hard-right base, which views compromise with Democrats in general, and President Obama in particular, as heresy. But in a speech Monday, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the second-ranking Democrat in the House showed that there are significant fissures in the Democratic Party as well. Hoyer, though nominally Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s second-in-command, is starkly different from Pelosi and many others on the party’s left wing when it comes to economic and fiscal issues....

The critics are right, however, that some people will choose to work less because they qualify for a tax-credit based subsidy. If not for this government program, they would have to work harder and employment numbers would be higher. So might total output or gross domestic product. This aspect of the Affordable Care Act distorts economic efficiency. But don't kid yourself that this is anything new. Social Security has the same effect. About 41 million people currently get Social Security retirement benefits. Many still do work, at least part-time. But most do not. If not for their monthly checks, which...

If you lend yourself money, should you charge interest on the loan? It would depend on how badly you need the interest income, wouldn't it? If you were desperate for cash, you'd pay yourself a hefty interest rate. After all, you need the money, right? If you fail to see the absurdity in those questions, you might be a member of Congress. But what may be even more absurd than those questions is federal finance. You see, the federal government "lends" itself money and pays interest on those "loans." The prime example of this practice is the surpluses generated by...

President Obama is facing a deepening dilemma about whether to abandon cuts to Social Security in his next fiscal blueprint, which is due out in March. Obama touched the third rail of American politics last year when he proposed a new formula for Social Security and other entitlements that would result in benefits being cut over time. Now congressional Democrats and unions are ramping up their pressure on Obama to drop the proposal, which many fear could become an albatross for the party in the midterm elections. “We want the president to make very clear that he is going to...

Over the course of their 60-year marriage, Bernard “Bernie” Karpinkski and his wife, Violet, took few chances when it came to their retirement. “From the time we were married, we started saving,” says Bernie, 89, who lives in Pueblo, Colorado. “We lived much more conservatively than most people. We had three cars our entire lives and drove them until they had close to 200,000 miles on them before we bought another. We didn’t buy our second home until we had enough saved to pay cash.” While their friends moved into bigger homes, took vacations and put their life on plastic,...

A “blind” Wisconsin man’s $175,000 Social Security disability fraud scheme ended when federal agents caught him driving a speedboat, according to the inspector general. Lawrence Popp, 58, was sentenced to one year in prison on Tuesday for defrauding the Social Security Administration... Popp, a wealthy businessman, continued to work and go on lavish vacations in the Cayman Islands while collecting disability benefits for five years. A record 10,988,269 people received federal disability benefits in December 2013, according to the SSA. A 2012 report from Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) found that more than 25 percent of benefits are awarded with...

Saying that life is hard is kind of like saying the sun is hot, water is wet, or noting that politicians lie a lot. It's so obvious that anyone who's paying attention already knows that it's true. That being said, life's even harder when you're working under false assumptions that have been drilled into you by your teachers, college professors, Hollywood, and politicians in D.C. Much of what liberalism drums into the young skulls full of mush simply isn't true and millions of lives have been ruined by people finding it out the hard way. The good news is that...

It took years for Watergate to unravel fully. The controversy over Barack Hussein Obama and his past, along with fraudulent documents continues to make headlines. Yet, the items needed to actually verify who Obama is continue to be kept from the public eye. Well, that all may be about to change. Attorney Orly Taitz may have just found a chink in the federal government’s armor in protecting Barack Obama from scrutiny, following a judge’s ruling over her Freedom of Information Act request from the Social Security Administration.

Democratic senators are pleading with President Obama to abandon his proposal to trim Social Security benefits before it becomes a liability for them in the midterm elections. The president proposed a new formula for calculating benefits in his budget last year, in hopes that the olive branch to Republicans would persuade them to back tax increases in a broader fiscal deal. But Democratic lawmakers say Obama should shelve the idea now that they are facing a difficult midterm election where they need to turn out the liberal base to preserve their Senate majority. “I’m not sure why we should be...

Whose side are you on? Theirs or yours? While the Republican Party opposes virtually every social advance in the past 100 years, the Democratic Party gives us: Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights, job safety laws, child labor laws, consumer protection, clean air and clean water laws, aid for the poor (food stamps) and middle class, student aid (Pell Grants, lower loan rates), financial safeguards (Consumer Financial Protection Agency), pending immigration reform and DREAM Act, veterans’ aid, saving the auto industry (and jobs), support for public education, building America (stimulus, jobs bills)....

For the 202nd straight month, the number of Americans receiving disability benefits rose. The end of 2013 saw another record set - 10,988,269 Americans now on disabilty, up 6,000 from the end of November. CNS News: The average monthly benefit paid to a disabled worker also hit a record of $1,146.43 in December, up from a previous high of $1,130.34 in December of last year.Spouses of disabled workers also got a record average monthly benefit of $308.13 in December, up from a previous high of $304.31 in August. Children of disabled workers also received a record average monthly benefit of...

Barack Obama and the Republican House have a New Year’s greeting for you that you might not have heard about. The thieves in Washington are hitting us with a series of taxes that will take a noticeable bite out of your income. Here are some of these increases. The amount we pay for Social Security will jump from 4.2% to 6.2%. If you earn just $50,000 a year, this will mean an additional $1000.00 bite out of your wallet. The top marginal rate will rise to 39.6% from the previous 35%. This will impact couples earning over $450,000 and singles...

Uncle Sam, always generous to a fault with taxpayers' money, doled out about $108 billion in Social Security benefits to the dead in 2012.  Give or take a few billion, over a decade that's about $1 trillion going to folks who crossed the River Styx.  Or more likely their kin, who may or may not take portions of the proceeds to decorate their loved ones' graves.     The Washington Times reported on Friday that the Social Security Administration does a spotty job tracking Social Security recipients' deaths, hence the dollars for the dead.  Reports the Times:      "Because SSA does not verify death...

Federal auditors said Friday the Social Security Administration still struggles with a basic problem — figuring out who is dead and who is not. The question is a crucial one, since federal agencies rely on the administration to cross-match data on deceased persons and avoid paying out federally funded benefits to people who aren’t alive, or to establish accurate benefits for survivors. The administration also maintains a “Death Master File” that is available to the public. “SSA’s methods for processing death reports may result in inaccurate, incomplete or untimely information for users of its death data,” the Government Accountability Office,...

As someone who is constantly researching retirement, I find the recent funding cuts to military retirees very disheartening. Worse yet, I see this as a move to establish ground zero for the testing of changes to Social Security benefits. On Wednesday, the Senate passed a bipartisan budget that scales back cost of living adjustments for working age military retirees starting in 2015. Several sources including Military.com suggests that qualified participants could lose between $3,700 and $6,200 per year, or an aggregate between $83,000 and $124,000 before they retire based on rank, age and years of service. Despite some protests, a...

A new study just published by the National Institute on Retirement Security – “Race and Retirement Insecurity in the United States”- presents a dismal snapshot of the state of retirement savings of minority American families. It reports that 54.3 percent of blacks work for employers that offer retirement plans compared to 62.3 percent of whites. And 43.9 percent of blacks participate in those plans compared to 53.9 percent of whites. Among Latinos, 37.8 percent work for employers with retirement plans and just 29.7 percent participate. Only 37.9 percent of non-white Americans have assets in a retirement account compared to 63.4...

We are locked in a generational war, which will get worse before it gets better. Indeed, it may not get better for a long time. No one wants to admit this, because it's ugly and unwelcome. Parents are supposed to care for their children, and children are supposed to care for their aging parents. For families, these collective obligations may work. But what makes sense for families doesn't always succeed for society as a whole. The clash of generations is intensifying. Last week, a federal judge ruled that Detroit qualifies for municipal bankruptcy. This almost certainly means that pensions and...

In a message to its members, MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group, hailed the Social Security “expansion movement” launched by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). In a speech on the Senate floor, and in television interviews, Warren recently declared, “The era of fighting about cutting Social Security is over, and now it is time to talk about expanding Social Security.” According to MoveOn.org, “Our progressive champ (Warren) isn’t alone—more than 150,000 MoveOn members have already backed Senate and House plans for increasing Social Security benefits, not cutting them.” …

Goldilocks wrote: The statement is quoted out of context. NY Times Musters Hillary Defense Of O’Care “What Difference Does It Make?” Dear Comrade Locks, Ok, so let me put it in context for you. Ambassador Chris Stevens, Tyrone S. Woods, Glen Anthony Doherty and Sean Smith died on or shortly after September 11th, 2012 in a terrorist attack on the embassy in Benghazi, Libya by supposed allies of the Obama administration. The administration was supposedly acting on behalf of the American people. But yet, no one really knows why this terrorist attack happened. Still. At the time Obama said that...

Submitted by Gary Galles of the Ludwig von Mises Institute,“We paid our Social Security and Medicare taxes; we earned our benefits.” It is that belief among senior citizens that President Obama was pandering to when, in his second inaugural address, he claimed that those programs “strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers.”If Social Security and Medicare both involved people voluntarily financing their own benefits, an argument could be made for seniors’ “earned benefits” view. But they have not. They have redistributed tens of trillions of dollars of wealth to themselves from those younger.Social Security and...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Juan, fasten your seat belt. The federal government should stay within the confines of the constitution. The constitution does not authorize the federal government to have anything whatsoever to do with healthcare. So, Obamacare should be abolished along with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, but the people who are on those programs should be grandfathered in because they paid money to be in there and they've ordered their lives to stay there. The states should regulate healthcare because the states retain that power under the constitution. So, if you want if you want mandatory healthcare, go...

There’s more to the deceit and dishonesty about Social Security and Medicare discussed in my recent columns. Congress tells us that one-half (6.2 percent) of the Social Security tax is paid by employees and that the other half is paid by employers, for a total of 12.4 percent. Similarly, we are told that a Medicare tax of 1.45 percent is levied on employees and that another 1.45 percent is levied on employers. The truth of the matter is that the burden of both taxes is borne by employees. In other words, we pay both the employee and the so-called employer...

Throw-away track phones bought at a nearby dollar store. Private investigator hired to trail working mom. Massive document shredding days. Bashing of hard drives. Office Chaos. Wow. Is this the latest fiction novel on a crime themed best seller list? No. These are actual references in US House of Representatives hearings on the massive Social Security Disability Fraud Scandal. Honest and dedicated federal employees, sickened and disgusted over the theft of money and services of US taxpayer dollars filed a whistleblower lawsuit to blow the lid off of a scandal that looks to bankrupt a federal agency founded for the...

Throw-away track phones bought at a nearby dollar store. Private investigator hired to trail working mom. Massive document shredding days. Bashing of hard drives. Office Chaos. Wow. Is this the latest fiction novel on a crime themed best seller list? No. These are actual references in US House of Representatives hearings on the massive Social Security Disability Fraud Scandal. Honest and dedicated federal employees, sickened and disgusted over the theft of money and services of US taxpayer dollars filed a whistleblower lawsuit to blow the lid off of a scandal that looks to bankrupt a federal agency founded for the...

According to a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), different generations have paid and will continue to pay disparate amounts of Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes, and they will also receive dissimilar amounts of Medicare and...

Can anybody cite the law that exempts people (Sellers) from divulging their SS#s during real estate transactions? I know this can be done (at least in NH) because I was at a closing 8.5 years ago, where the Seller was refusing to release his. The in-house lawyer was then called upon and, when he came out, he and the Seller had a bit of a back-and-forth about it in front of everyone. The Seller then told the lawyer that he could prove it to him if he'd just come with him outside the room (presumably out to a telephone?). When...

Stan Druckenmiller makes an unlikely class warrior. He's a member of the 1%—make that the 0.001%—one of the most successful money managers of all time, and 60 years old to boot. But lately he has been touring college campuses promoting a message of income redistribution you don't hear out of Washington. It's how federal entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are letting Mr. Druckenmiller's generation rip off all those doting Barack Obama voters in Generation X, Y and Z. "I have been shocked at the reception. I had planned to only visit Bowdoin, " his alma mater in Maine, he...

How do you solve a problem if you refuse to admit you have one — or if you delude yourself into thinking it's not as bad as it actually is? The answer: You don't. You might minimize symptoms and make some progress. But unless you address the root cause, you will not find a real long-term solution. Unfortunately, far too many politicians in Washington refuse to acknowledge — and as a result, never accurately describe — the challenges currently facing America. I'm not sure why so many choose to keep their heads in the sand, but their state of denial...

In prepared remarks given in advance to the Huffington Post, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka warns Democrats against accepting any budget deal that includes cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, and even goes so far as to threaten to end the career of any politician who fails to heed his call. “No politician … I don’t care the political party … will get away with cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits. Don’t try it,” Trumka says, according to the Huffington Post. “This warning goes double for Democrats,” he continues. “We will never forget. We will never forgive. And we...

A number of years ago I was between flights on a business trip and was sitting in an airport restaurant having lunch. It was right after the 2008 presidential election and I knew that the election of America’s first black president, a man of the hard left, would make my job bringing a conservative message to black communities much more challenging and difficult. As I ate my sandwich I glanced at the wall and saw a sign with a quote from General Douglas MacArthur. It said, “We are not retreating – we are advancing in another direction.” I was...

As gun sales break records—partly because of fear of coming gun control from the Obama administration—supplies of ammo ran so low that gun stores and ranges have to ration ammunition. Meanwhile, rumors of mass purchases of ammunition made by government entities began to fly around the Internet. Making all this even worse is that fact that it hasn’t been a short-term supply problem. Now well over a year since the shortages of popular types of ammo began there are still empty shelves and rationing here and there around the United States.

A former Social Security official has pleaded guilty to identity theft on accusations he used information from the federal agency's database and took more than $160,000 of a Coventry man's stock investments. ... Hurst, who was assistant district manager for the Social Security Administration in Warwick, used a Social Security database to find personal information such as a Social Security number and date of birth.

I wanted to share a quick story about something that happened in our household today and 3 days ago with a friend of mine as well of 23 years. My wife is on permanent disability for the remainder of her life due to a number of health reasons from on and off cancer battles to other sustained health issues that prevent her from working. My friend Cory injured himself on the job a few years ago breaking his back, right knee, and shoulder. Both have been getting around $1,000.00 a month in disability. My wife puts that money towards the...

Eventually this shutdown crisis will end. And eventually the two parties will make another stab at a deal on taxes, investments and entitlements. But there’s one outcome from such negotiations that I can absolutely guarantee: Seniors, Wall Street and unions will all have their say and their interests protected. So the most likely result will be more tinkering around the edges, as our politicians run for the hills the minute someone accuses them of “fixing the deficit on the backs of the elderly” or creating “death panels” to sensibly allocate end-of-life health care. Could this time be different? Short of...

I just heard my Conservative radio hosts discussing what is being put on the table by the Republicans in the House. They said Ryan is pushing means testing for SS benefits.

The Social Security Administration has begun warning the public it cannot guarantee full benefit payments if the debt ceiling isn’t increased. When asked by the public, the agency is notifying beneficiaries that “Unlike a federal shutdown which has no impact on the payment of Social Security benefits, failure to raise the debt ceiling puts Social Security benefits at risk,” according to a person familiar with the agency directive. The warning was assembled after the agency consulted with the Treasury Department, which would play a lead role in determining how the government handles payments if the borrowing limit isn’t raised soon....

Social Security Administration employees are being instructed to tell people who ask that if the debt ceiling is not raised, their social security benefits could be in danger. In an email sent Friday, obtained by The Daily Caller, employees are instructed: “If a member of the public asks whether their Social Security payment will be affected if the federal debt ceiling is not raised, you may give the following response: ‘Unlike a federal shutdown which has no impact on the payment of Social Security benefits, failure to raise the debt ceiling puts Social Security benefits at risk.’ “Direct all program–related...

The President’s comments, underlying the danger of not authorizing an increase in government debt, highlights the structural concerns within the government’s current fiscal policy. During a campaign style speech (does he give any other kind?) the President said "In a government shutdown, Social Security checks still go out on time, [ but] if we don't raise the debt ceiling, they don't go out on time." double speak "In a government shutdown, Social Security checks still go out on time, [ but] if we don't raise the debt ceiling, they don't go out on time."

President Barack Obama warned Thursday that as bad as the government shutdown is, a failure to raise the debt ceiling would be even more damaging to the U.S. economy, and called on congressional Republicans to end their “irresponsibility” on both issues. “As reckless as a government shutdown is … an economic shutdown that results from default would be dramatically worse,” Obama said on the morning of the third day of the government shutdown, at an event held at M. Luis Construction Company in the D.C. suburb of Rockville, Md. The president had on Wednesday warned Wall Street that “this time’s...

Pensions: In Chile, a major study shows the nation's private retirement accounts provide workers pensions worth 87% of their salaries, 73% of that from profits on savings. So much for the canard about the perils of markets. The story was front-page news in Chile's largest newspapers, El Mercurio and La Tercera, on Sept. 3, a powerful affirmation of what former Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain called "The Chilean Model" of private retirement accounts. The study of 28,000 households by Dictuc, a consultancy affiliated with the Catholic University of Chile, showed that male workers who contributed just 10%...

In response to Just How Distorted is the U.S. Unemployment Rate Number?, reader Bjorn asked "care to take a guess on the percentage of fraud among the population receiving disability compensation?" Fraud Incentive My Reply Follows: I suspect fraud is in the neighborhood of 25-50% (and higher would not surprise me one bit). The reason is that States Have an Incentive to Promote (Not Stop) Disability Fraud. This all goes back to 1996 when president Bill Clinton promised to "end welfare as we know it". He did indeed do just that, and fraud is the result. Why? The federal government...

Americans who dream of a retirement filled with sandy beaches, temperate weather and colorful local life may have another thing coming. That's because a new report from the National Institute on Retirement Security finds that 45 percent of working-age households have no retirement savings at all. The average figure for funds set aside by households nearing the end of their working lives was a meager $12,000. That's not enough to cover a single year. If there is no change in their savings rate, many Americans may wind up living on monthly Social Security benefits alone. Monthly benefits now average just...