How much Fraud, Waste and Abuse is there in the SocialSecurity Administration (Part seven) – Not much inSocial Security Benefits programs either.

The government’s terminology is important to know: Fraud waste and abuse generates what the government calls Improper Payments, and improper payments are referred to by Social Security in its reporting to Congress as “Overpayments”. 

So how many overpayments are there? How much fraud waste and abuse is there? Have we looked?

Section 845(c) of the Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA) of 2015 requires the Social Security Administration to submit, by January 1 of each calendar year, a report to the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance. These are the Agency’s oversight committees. The report submitted to Congress December 18, 2024, as required by the BBA, provides the following information:

The number and total value of overpayments we recovered or scheduled to be recovered during the previous fiscal year for the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs respectively, including the terms and conditions of repayment of such overpayments.

The report notes that “an overpayment occurs when Social Security pays an individual more than they should have been paid for a given period. For instance, in the SSI program, one reason for overpayments is that recipients do not timely report changes in their current living arrangements. Social Security generally discovers these overpayments when it conducts SSI redeterminations, which are periodic non-medical reviews of SSI eligibility.”

This is important: Social Security’s compliance data submitted to Congress shows that Social Security’s payment accuracy in the Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance programs is exceptionally high: 

• 99.8 percent of insurance benefits were free from overpayment in FY 2023. 
• In the SSI program, 90.8 percent of payments were free from overpayment in FY 2023.

The facts are in: Decades of investigative audits and other investigations by multiple interlocking investigative authorities created by Congress have repeatedly confirmed to the American people that Social Security’s Retirement and Disability programs are not subject to any significant fraud waste and abuse.