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...

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,...