Exclusive: New bill limits Social Security overpayment clawbacks following Ch. 9 investigation

WASHINGTON, N.C. — Our company-wide investigation in partnership with KFF Health News into Social Security overpayments and efforts by the government to demand the money back from beneficiaries is leading to new action on Capitol Hill.

For nearly a year, we’ve told you how millions of people around the country are being told they owe the government money after the Social Security Administration mistakenly overpaid billions of dollars. Sometimes people are told they owe the money years or even decades after the mistake.

Now, there’s a new proposal in Congress meant to help. The “Protecting Americans from Social Security Claw Back Act” limits the time the agency can ask for the money back to three years.

Our Washington News Bureau spoke exclusively with the bill’s sponsor in the House, Rep. Mike Carey (R-OH).

“What we’re saying is listen, if you couldn’t get your act together and notify these people within a three-year window, then you’re going to have to waive that,” said Carey. “Your network has done a very good job. Your reporting on this issue, notifying many members of Congress. We had many of these constituents reach out to our office about these overpayments … These are people that have been playing by the rules. They’ve been doing everything that they thought they were supposed to do.”

We told you how last year the then-acting head of SSA told Congress about one million people each year were impacted by overpayments but our reporting revealed the real number is double that.

“Through your actions and through your FOIA requests, you realized that that number was significantly lower than the number of people that were actually being targeted by these clawbacks,” said Carey.

Carey said he’s hoping the bill will improve the efficiency at the agency and ease the burden on millions of beneficiaries.

He said he has a Democratic co-sponsor of the bill in the House, Rep. Emilia Sykes (D-OH). Carey said he’s hopeful for enough bipartisan support to eventually make it through both Chambers of Congress and be signed into law.

We asked Carey about what future actions should be taken to try and stop Social Security overpayments from happening in the first place.

“I think this is the first step and I do think we need to make sure that Social Security has the tools that they need to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” said Carey.

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