The "Social Security Overpayment Relief Act" limits the Social Security Administration's ability to recover overpayments to a 10-year period after the overpayment occurred.
Ruben Gallego
Senator
AZ
The "Social Security Overpayment Relief Act" limits the Social Security Administration's ability to recover overpayments to a 10-year period. The government is restricted from adjusting payments or recovering funds if the overpayment occurred more than 10 years before the error was discovered, applying to both Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits.
Social Security Overpayment Relief Act Proposes 10-Year Limit on Recovering Funds
Okay, let's break down the 'Social Security Overpayment Relief Act.' In simple terms, this proposed bill puts a time limit on how far back the Social Security Administration (SSA) can go to collect money they accidentally overpaid you. The core idea is straightforward: the government generally wouldn't be able to recover overpayments of Social Security or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits if the mistake happened more than 10 years before they actually spot the error.
The 10-Year Lookback
So, what does Section 2 actually change? Right now, the SSA can sometimes try to recover overpayments that happened many years, even decades, ago. This bill introduces a hard stop. If an overpayment under Title II (your standard Social Security retirement, disability, or survivor benefits) or Title XVI (Supplemental Security Income for low-income individuals with disabilities, blindness, or age 65+) occurred over 10 years in the past, the SSA would be blocked from adjusting your future payments or otherwise trying to reclaim those funds once that decade mark is passed before discovery. It’s essentially creating a statute of limitations for these specific types of government errors.
What This Means in Practice
Imagine getting a letter today demanding repayment for extra benefits you unknowingly received back in, say, 2012. Under this bill, if the SSA is only just discovering that 2012 error now, they likely wouldn't be able to collect. This aims to provide significant relief and predictability for beneficiaries. Instead of facing potential financial hardship from surprise clawbacks related to very old issues, people would have more certainty. It prevents individuals from being held financially responsible indefinitely for errors they likely had no knowledge of, especially when those errors occurred so long ago that records and memories have faded.