The Social Security Administration is backing off a plan it announced in March to withhold 100% of many beneficiaries’ monthly payments to claw back money the government had allegedly overpaid them.
Instead, the agency will default to withholding 50% of old-age, survivors, and disability insurance benefits, the agency said in an “emergency message” to staff dated April 25.
The agency long made it a routine to halt benefits to recoup billions of dollars it sent recipients but later said they should not have received. A policy under the Joe Biden administration to provide relief to beneficiaries, who often live on the fringe of poverty, last year had capped the clawbacks at 10%.
The partial reversal is another twist in the Trump administration’s tumultuous approach to Social Security, which has included staff cuts and the acting commissioner’s threat, which has since been withdrawn, to essentially shut down the agency.
The emergency message involves the agency’s practice of paying beneficiaries money they were not supposed to receive — and then, often after years have passed and the amounts have ballooned to tens of thousands of dollars or more per person — demanding the money back, even if the overpayment was Social Security’s fault.
In many cases, recovering the money had entailed withholding 100% of monthly benefits.
Millions of beneficiaries, including people struggling to get by on monthly checks, have received overpayment notices, a 2023 investigation by KFF Health News and Cox Media Group found. Clawbacks have left some homeless, the news organizations reported.
In the aftermath of that reporting, Mar …