ATLANTA — Channel 2 Action News has learned the Trump Administration is making a private change to a policy it publicly announced just last month.
We obtained an “emergency message” sent to Social Security Administration staff informing them that beginning April 25, SSA will be withholding 50% of monthly benefits checks for recipients who have received Social Security overpayments.
Just last month, SSA issued a press release announcing it would be withholding 100% of recipients’ monthly checks when there is an overpayment.
The Trump administration said at the time that it can save as much as $7 billion over the next decade by withholding 100% of monthly checks.
Martin O’Malley was Social Security Commissioner during the Biden administration.
“It was a cruel hearted policy before with 100% and with 50% it’s half as cruel, but it’s still cruel,” O’Malley said.
“We have the significant responsibility to be good stewards of the trust funds for the American people. It is our duty to revise the overpayment repayment policy back to full withholding, as it was during the Obama administration and first Trump administration, to properly safeguard taxpayer funds,” said Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner of Social Security last month.
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In 2023, after an investigation by Channel 2 Action News, KFF Health News and Cox Media Group cast a spotlight on overpayments and clawbacks, lawmakers from both parties called on the Social Security Administration to change its approach, and in 2024, the Biden Administration limited clawbacks to 10% of monthly benefit checks.
The policy changes a year ago were inspired in part by the plight of people like Denise Woods. She was sleeping in her Chevy in Savannah, Georgia, in December 2023 while contending with lupus and congestive heart failure after the government cut off her disability benefits.
The government was demanding she repay almost $58,000.
Many overpayments are the result of government error. It can take the government years to figure out it has been paying someone too much, and by then, the amount the government says it is owed can grow far beyond a beneficiary’s ability to repay. It has often demanded that recipients repay the full amount within 30 days.
As of October 2024, the SSA was withholding at least a portion of monthly benefit payments from hundreds of thousands of people, according to data it provided last fall to KFF Health News and Cox Media Group. The agency said it was withholding up to 10% percent or less from 669,903 people to recoup an overpayment. Asked whether those numbers covered all types of benefits administered by the SSA, the agency’s press office didn’t say.
The new plan to completely withhold monthly benefits from recipients who were allegedly overpaid does not extend to the Supplemental Security Income program, one of two Social Security programs for people with disabilities. SSI, as the agency explains, covers “people with disabilities and older adults who have little or no income or resources.”
As Channel 2 Action News and KFF Health News revealed in 2023, about 2 million people a year were receiving notices from the SSA that they were overpaid and owed money back. This change should affect about half of those, around 1 million people per year.
People can appeal overpayment notices, request a lower withholding rate, or ask the SSA to waive collection altogether, the agency said.
The SSA does not pursue recoveries while an initial appeal or waiver request is pending, it said.
O’Malley says it’s hard for recipients to keep track of all the changes.
“It’s just created a heightened level of anxiety. They’ve really robbed people of their peace of mind about the program,” he said.
We reached out to SSA to ask about the changes and why they are being made and have no received a response.
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