A new bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives July 29, 2020 that would stop Social Security from trying to collect overpayments from beneficiaries during the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many times Social Security makes mistakes when it comes to calculating benefit amounts for seniors or people with disabilities. When the mistake is made that someone were paid too much money Social Security will demand the money back, but this bill would stop that at least for a period of time. Most of the time the beneficiaries who were overpaid have no idea that they were overpaid because it was a mistake made by Social Security and was not the fault of the beneficiary.
In a press release from the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, (D-Illinois), who introduced the bill with U.S. Rep. John Larson, (D-Connecticut), said SSA should not be demanding money from people who are already going through financial distress during a pandemic. Below is Davis’ quote from the press release.
“Low income, disabled and seniors, many of whom are always at the precipice of falling into immediate life crisis, now face a new potentially disruptive conflict in their lives,” said Davis. “Some of these individuals, through no fault of their own, received automatic COVID-19 benefits in excess, in retrospect, of what the regulations prescribe. Attempting to ‘claw back’ some of these payments is not only impractical as the recipients are extremely unlikely to have the resources to return the payments, but it is also cruel and potentially dangerous as they could be forced into making impossible choices as to what to give up in their meager resources in an attempt to respond to any such demand. I believe the only just and humane approach to this confusion is a ‘no-fault’ stance to this looming threat; that is, hold these recipients harmless against any errors on the part of the government. No one in government ever intended that the COVID-19 benefits should cause any harm or injustice to the recipients.”
