Republicans silent on new Social Security rule that could bankrupt Americans

Republicans were against the rule — until now. The new rule will result in 100 percent of payments being withheld if Social Security wrongfully overpays Americans.

Mar 17, 2025

∙ Paid

Upgrade to paid to play voiceover

Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone, 1931. National Archives at College Park, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

I have a story out this morning at Rolling Stone detailing a new Social Security policy that could bankrupt beneficiaries. There’s a ton of news coming out of the SSA and I’m all over it. It’s a lot of work but it’s work that I believe in. If you want to support my work, please consider a paid subscription to American Doom or dropping a few dollars into our Coffee Fund. Now, on to the news…

***

I stopped to chat with a guy named Kevin at the corner store the other day. He’s had it rough. He sits in a wheelchair outside the store or at the nearby bus stop and sips a soda or a beer, occasionally asking for a smoke or a dollar. But he always seems pretty upbeat and from my brief conversations — with it, lucid, thoughtful, and polite.

I asked him how his application for Social Security and disability payments were going. He’s had several strokes in the past few years — part of the reason he’s in a wheelchair and can’t work. He’s been trying to get on some form of Social Security and disability payments for three years, he told me. Part of the problem is that he didn’t have a permanent address for a while. This means that many homeless people struggle to get on Social Security and disability. But now, Kevin does have an address so he’s hopeful he’s in the final stretch of getting payments set up.

He has a case worker at the local Social Security office to help him. He’s lucky in that respect, not just because he has someone at the agency to help him but because, for now at least, the Savannah Social Security office remains open. But a lot of people in Kevin’s position — or worse — aren’t so lucky. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been closing field offices like the one in Savannah where Kevin goes to see his case worker.

DOGE has listed 47 field offices in 24 states for closure. Five of the agency’s eight regional directors have resigned or taken buyouts, amid an exodus of knowledgeable, experienced staff within the highest levels of the agency. So, how is any of this going to make Social Security more efficient? It probably won’t — unless you take “efficiency” to simply mean fewer services and a reduced capacity for the agency to carry out its primary purpose of getting money to poor, elderly and disabled Americans like Kevin. Then, yes, Social Security is going to be much more efficient.

Now, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is re-instituting a policy that could bankrupt beneficiaries. The new policy requires the agency to automatically withhold the entirety of a person’s Social Security payment if they receive an overpayment, what’s called the “clawback” rate.

In recent years, the SSA has handed out billions of dollars in overpayments — most of them through no fault of the beneficiaries themselves. Under the Biden administration, former SSA commissioner Martin O’Malley changed the policy so that only 10 percent of a beneficiary’s payment would be withheld if they received an overpayment — and only if they didn’t respond to the agency’s requests to pay back the amount they were overpaid. Now, the SSA will begin, on March 27, to automatically withhold entire checks if an overpayment occurs.

More Doom reporting on Social Security

Republicans were against this but are now silent. At Rolling Stone today, I detail all the instances in which congressional Republicans spoke out against not just the previous iteration of the 100 percent clawback rate, but clawbacks altogether. O’Malley tells me that overpayments are sure to increase as DOGE and the Trump administration continue to gut the SSA. This means that the agency will likely soon begin withholding entire checks from Americans who receive even as little as a few extra dollars in Social Security payments.

Beneficiaries can request waivers to avoid having to pay back the agency, but will have to call an 800 number to do so, or visit a Social Security office in person. O’Malley says this, too, will be more difficult under Trump and DOGE’s dismantling of the agency.

That dismantling will also make it more difficult for people like Kevin to sign up for benefits in the first place, O’Malley said. Republicans appear unconcerned about all of this, saying that DOGE is simply making the agency more efficient. It’s not clear how eliminating offices and programs, cancelling contracts for things like data-gathering operations, and firing thousands of workers will make the SSA more efficient, but Republicans seem to wholeheartedly believe this. As I reported yesterday, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee rejected efforts by Democrats to learn more about DOGE’s work inside the SSA and other agencies.

We’ll know pretty soon whether DOGE’s work will make the SSA more efficient, or whether it simply makes it more difficult for Americans like Kevin to receive the benefits they deserve.

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to American Doom to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.