David Hilzenrath, Jodie Fleischer, Cox Media Group, KFF Health News
A year ago, a new Social Security Director set out to prevent the agency from financially destroying many people it was meant to help.
The agency has long practiced reducing or suspending benefits checks to collect billions of dollars in payments to recipients, but said it should not be received later.
Martin O’Malley, then-Commander of Social Security, announced in March 2024 that the agency would cut off checks for monthly ages, survivors and disabled people and would not recoup the money they allegedly overpaid. Instead, by default, we withhold 10% of our monthly benefits. The new policy allowed people who already barely live in the area to pay rent and keep food on the table.
Last Friday, the Trump administration overturned that policy.
Starting March 27, the Social Security Administration will automatically withhold 100% of recipients’ monthly benefits in order to recover from new overpayments, the agency announced.
The agency said it is acting for financial responsibility and that the reversal will save around $7 billion over a decade.
“It is our duty between the Obama administration and the first Trump administration to fully repay overpayment policies to ensure proper protection of taxpayer funds,” committee chair Lee Dudeck said in a news release.
Advocates of Social Security beneficiaries described the behavior as cruel and harmful.
“The outcome is predictable. It’s more unnecessary suffering,” said Kathleen Romigg, who worked for the Social Security Administration under O’Malley.
Kate Lang, the advocacy group Justice, said she was heartbroken.
“The most vulnerable people with the least resources are those who feel the harsh effects of this change,” she said. Many people “will never be able to buy food or put the roof on their heads,” she said.
In 2023, after an investigation by KFF Health News and Cox Media Group, it highlighted overpayments and Clawbacks, and lawmakers from both parties called on the Social Security Agency to change their approach.
The policy change a year ago was inspired in part by the light-shape of people like Dennis Woods, who slept in Chevrolet in Savannah, Georgia, fighting against lupus and congestive heart failure after the government cut off disability benefits. The government had requested that she pay her back almost $58,000.
Many overpayments are the result of government errors. It can take years to realize that government is too much for someone. By then, the amount the government owes can grow far beyond the ability of its beneficiaries to repay. And in many cases, the recipient requested that the full amount be repaid within 30 days.
As of October, SSA had withheld at least some of its monthly benefits from hundreds of thousands of people, according to data provided by SSA to KFF Health News and Cox Media Group last fall. The agency said it has withholded up to 10% from 669,903 people to collect overpayments. The agency’s press did not speak up as they were asked if these numbers cover all kinds of benefits that the SSA manages.
“Under Trump’s leadership, Social Security has revived a cruel policy that curbs Social Security overpayments without considering America’s ability to pay or whether overpayments are institutional errors.”
The new plan to withhold monthly benefits from allegedly overpaid recipients does not extend to the Supplemental Security Income Program, one of two Social Security programs for people with disabilities. SSI covers “people with disabilities and seniors with little or no income or resources,” as the agency explains.
The government’s estimate that a complete cut of people would save $7 billion over a decade means more overpayments are expected over the next few years.
The March 7 announcement of the SSA was part of a broader dismantling of Biden-era policies under President Donald Trump. It also announced that staff will be cut from around 57,000 to 50,000 in February, which is part of a wider upheaval for the Social Security Agency.
In an interview Monday, O’Malley predicted that the public would go to the agency over the phone and experience much longer waits to wait longer for a disability decision.
Social Security runs on very old computer systems and kicks people out of agencies that understand it, saying, “It’s just a system breaking down.”
“The risk of shutting down agencies completely is greatly increased by people who are fascinated by people who don’t know what they’re doing,” O’Malley said.
At PBS Newshour last week, he advised the winners to save money in preparation for a profit break.
Trump’s Deputy Elon Musk boasts about bringing chainsaws to the federal government and calls Social Security the Ponzi Project. In a signed declaration filed last week in federal court, Tiffany Frick, a recently retired SSA employee, said he “were seen ignoring a critical process.”
SSA’s new management team is “blowing” its workforce. However, under the previous administration, agents had a completely different story.
A year ago, O’Malley told lawmakers that “historic funding and staffing shortages” created a “service delivery crisis” as the number of people receiving benefits increased.
Late last year, the agency provided data to KFF Health News, showing that its workforce was close to its 50-year low in September. As of last month, disability benefits applicants had waited an average of more than seven months to decide, according to the SSA website.
Jemberdick, a lawyer with Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, said cuts in staffing delivery have led to more overpayments than ever before, making it difficult for those affected to clear up mistakes.
As KFF Health News and Cox Media Group revealed in 2023, about 2 million people a year were notified from SSA that they were overpaid.
People can appeal notifications of overpayment, request a lower withholding rate, or ask the SSA to waive collection altogether, the agency said. The SSA is not pursuing a recovery, but initial appeal or exemption requests are pending.
Just before O’Malley left SSA in November, the agency implemented the changes, making it easier for beneficiaries to waive overpayments. The agency explained the basis for determining that the beneficiary was not negligent. For example, if the institution continues to issue overpayments after the beneficiary reports a change in financial situation that should have led to a decrease in benefits. These policy changes remain the same.
Republicans who expressed concern about clawback in the aftermath of the 2023 news report did not respond to inquiries or decline to comment on the story. One of them is Sen. Rick Scott (R-FLA), who is currently chairing the Senate Special Committee on Aging.
“Driving American taxpayers pay Social Security for everything in their lives so they can rely on it at the time they need most,” Scott said in a 2023 letter to their agency. “The fact that SSA’s actions make some of them worse is not my fault, but I’m absolutely not accepting it.”
©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Original issue: March 13, 2025, 4:02 PM EDT
