Social Security recently released a wish list of initiatives if it gets an increase in funding, something President Joe Biden is backing. Biden wants to increase Social Security funding by close to 10 percent and part of the increased funding would be spent on improving payment accuracy on benefits and an enhanced debt collection system. Both initiatives were detailed in the recent Social Security report about the president’s budget plans.
Improving Payment Accuracy
As good stewards of taxpayer dollars, we must continue to improve our payment accuracy. Given the scope of our programs—with over $1 trillion dollars paid in combined Social Security and SSI benefits in FY 2020—even a small error rate causes substantial improper payment amounts.
This Budget supports streamlining and modernizing our debt management systems; improving our death data processing; and refining the way we collect and use data to improve payment accuracy. In addition, we continue developing, rolling out, and enhancing our case processing systems to improve the accuracy of our decisions.
Debt Collection
Currently, we use numerous systems to record, track, and manage our OASDI and SSI overpayments. We have begun a multi-year initiative to develop a streamlined, modernized enterprise Debt Management System to enable us to more effectively and efficiently post, track, collect, and report our overpayment activity. As part of this initiative, we recently implemented a new online payment solution that allows debtors, who do not receive Social Security or SSI benefits, the ability to repay overpayment debts, partially or in full. We also partnered with Department of Treasury (Treasury) to use the services of U.S. Bank, Treasury’s financial agent, to implement a lockbox service to assist with our paper remittance processing efforts and streamline the process. Lockbox banking is a service provided by financial institutions to help receive and process customers’ payments. Additionally, we published an interim final rule on the waiver of recovery of certain overpayment debts accruing during the COVID-19 pandemic FY 2022 Congressional Justification 29 period between March and September 2020. We also completed a program debt write-off initiative to remove uncollectible debt.
