When presidents release budget proposals it takes time to navigate specifics because it involves funding, or in President Trump’s case de-funding, for so many different government agencies. Over time as experts take a closer look at budget proposals certain agenda items might be overlooked at first, but then come out later. There are many aspects of Trump’s budget proposal that deal with Social Security and one of those is overpayments.
Sometimes Social Security makes mistakes and actually pays someone receiving Social Security disability too much money. This can occur for a variety of reasons, usually technical ones, but when it happens Social Security comes calling to recoup the money it mistakenly paid the beneficiary. This is known as an overpayment. People who have been overpaid by Social Security are notified and Social Security informs that the money has to be paid back. In some instances the overpayment can be several thousands of dollars. Obviously people who receive Social Security disability don’t have a lot of money considering the average monthly amount is around $1,200. Social Security allows those who have been overpaid to pay back what they owe over time. Currently Social Security allows collections on overpayments to be as little as $10 per month, but that would change under Trump’s budget.
“The budget proposes increasing the minimum monthly overpayment collection from $10 a month to 10 percent of the overpayment amount.”
This would be a huge burden on people who owe overpayments. Imagine if someone owes $10,000 in overpayments, which not that uncommon, it would mean they would owe $1,000 per month, almost their entire Social Security disability check. As is the case with most of the proposals in the Trump budget, there is very little chance this proposal will get any sort of traction.
