The lack of funding for Social Security has been talked about endlessly. In previous blog posts we have discussed how there are 1 million people in this country who are waiting, sometimes well over a year, for a disability hearing and how Social Security lacks the operating budget to provide sufficient service. The problem is much deeper than that though, and it could be that Social Security’s operating shortfalls are actually costing taxpayer money.
The Office of Inspector General for Social Security recently released a report that shows Social Security might be paying people too much money in benefits because the agency lacks the funding to hire personnel to perform reviews of disability claims. Social Security does redeterminations on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) claims to investigate the continued eligibility of beneficiaries. The problem is Social Security does these redeterminations all too infrequently.
“We identified 53,744 SSI recipients who had not had a redetermination completed in longer than 10 years,” the report said.
More than 10 percent of SSI recipients, this amounts to over 1 million people, had not had a redetermination completed in over 10 years because Social Security only did a limited number of redetermination due to budget constraints.
“We estimate about 77,060 SSI recipients might be overpaid approximately $381.5 million because Social Security had not completed a redetermination in longer than 10 years,” the Inspector General’s office said.
The end result is Social Security is actually losing money because the agency is not properly funded. Social Security can’t hire more employees because its operating budget has remained stagnant for over eight years. Those who are successful in business always say “you have to spend money to make money,” but in this case it’s more like spending money not to lose money.
