To those nattering nabobs of negativity who don’t trust
government to do the right thing, or even to stop doing the wrong thing
once discovered, I just want to say: “You’re right.”Again.
Last April, a Washington Post exposé about a bizarrely tyrannical debt collection program caused the Social Security Administration (SAA) to publicly promise it would cease and desist from said program. The Social Security bureaucracy had been snatching the income tax refund checks of grown children whose parents, many decades ago, had allegedly been sent excess money intended for the care and feeding of these then-youngsters by this same incompetent outfit.
The booty? A not insignificant $75 million. The victims? A whopping 400,000 of them.
Due process? The SSA didn’t go before a judge to prove these people owed a valid debt, nor even bother to inform folks that their tax refunds were being seized. Instead, the Social Security gang just flat-out took the money . . . surreptitiously, like any other thief in the night.
In a stark break with their name, Social Security officials decided to collect these “debts” by intercepting state and federal tax refunds before they could be sent to the adults whose parents or parent had allegedly received excess benefits some three or even four decades ago.
Of course, Congress has its bloody, rotten hands in this. A provision in the 2008 farm bill authorized SSA to beginning collecting overpayments going back beyond the 10-year limit that had been the law.
In some of these collection cases, the SSA wasn’t certain who exactly owed the money. In one case, the agency went after a child even when they could find the mother who supposedly owed the money. Why? The mother had already beaten them in federal court.
The SSA flouted more than common sense and decency. Children should not be held legally responsible for the debts of their parents.
Hasn’t this been settled law for at least the last couple of centuries?
“They are going after kids, and their briefs prove it,” explains Robert Vogel, an attorney litigating against the SSA, “They’re asking the court to be the first court in the United States to force a child to pay a debt incurred by the parents. It’s really quite disgusting.”
