Social Security Overpays Billions Under Leadership of Racial Equity Activist

Under the leadership of a noted racial equity activist the Social Security Administration (SSA) has mistakenly overpaid beneficiaries tens of billions of dollars, including a 65% spike in overpayments in one year. In 2023 the agency with a stated mission of ensuring equity and accessibility by addressing systemic barriers to participation and a commitment to providing services to underserved communities made a whopping $23 billion in overpayments, according to its latest Agency Financial Report. The figure is a marked increase over the already stunning $11.1 billion in overpayments that SSA erroneously made in 2022.

SSA’s dreadful habit of overpaying billions in benefits goes back years as American taxpayers get stuck with the hefty price because most of the money is never recovered. In the last few years, the agency has doled out between $6 billion and $7 billion in new overpayments annually, the new report reveals. It shows that most of the 2022 overpayments, around $6.5 billion, occurred within the Old-Age Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) programs which provide monthly benefits to qualified retired and disabled workers and their dependents and to survivors of insured workers. Eligibility and benefit amounts are determined by the worker’s contributions to Social Security. {snip}

At a congressional hearing earlier this year SSA Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi told federal lawmakers that her agency is trying to recover the money by sending out millions of “overpayment notices” to those who erroneously got extra cash. Kijakazi said 1,028,389 people got the notices in 2022 and 986,912 in fiscal 2023, which ended in September. Kijakazi is a renowned racial equity proponent with a storied career of researching—and tackling—structural racism and the racial wealth gap in both government and high-profile nonprofits. She has served as co-chair of the National Advisory Council on Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap at the leftist Center for American Progress and on the Washington, D.C. Equitable Recovery Advisory Group. {snip}

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