Anyone who has ever worked a nine-to-five job, or any job, really, has dreamt of the day when their dues have been paid and they can sit back, relax, and enjoy retirement. Thanks to everyone’s favorite Democratic institution, Social Security promises that checks will keep coming in monthly to thank you for all your hard work. After all, it is YOUR money that the government was kind of enough to hold onto for you until you were out of the workforce.
Social Security wasn’t exactly “secure” for a friend of my mother, a retired widow living in Texas when, on January twenty-third, she received a letter from Social Security. The letter kindly informed her that the government had been overpaying her and to compensate would be deducting two-hundred dollars from each monthly check, effective immediately. My mother’s friend took to Facebook to vent her frustration.
“Wow, what an embarrassing slip-up for some SS employee,” you’re probably thinking. However, this woman’s case does not seem to be an isolated event. Other women commented on her Facebook post expressing disdain over similar situations. One woman was overpaid by several thousand dollars, which is currently being withheld from her checks. This commenter claimed that she has had four separate meetings with SS employees in search of an accounting trail to prove that she was in fact overpaid. Most recently she was told to go before a judge, who would also be employed by the organization she was trying to fight.
One apparent trend is that Social Security is targeting widows who solely rely on the checks they receive. There are also some instances of Social Security withholding funds they claim were wrongly distributed when the recipient is also accessing the benefits of Medicare, and is therefore forced to pay out of pocket.
“How does Social Security have this much power?” you’re probably wondering in dismay. Well, let’s take a closer look at where exactly this Big-Brother–esque entity comes from.
The Subcommittee on Social Security is a subcommittee of the Committee on Ways and Means, the primary tax-writing committee in the House of Representatives. A position on the Committee on Ways and Means is a pretty big deal. If you are a member of this Committee, you cannot serve on any other House Committee unless you apply for a waiver from the congressional leadership. Its other subcommittees are Health, Human Resources, Oversight, Trade, and Tax Policy.
Looking at the chain of command, Social Security falls under the Committee on Ways and Means, which falls under the House of Representatives, which falls under the federal legislation, which is checked by the executive and judiciary institutions. What a prime example of an excessively complicated administrative procedure, also known as bureaucracy.
It seems that oversight (remember the sister subcommittee to SS?) has caused this federal bureaucracy, fondly referred to as the fourth branch of government by Joseph Vasquez, to slip through the cracks of a bureaucratic government’s vigilant committees and allow itself to reign unchecked. First, by making a mistake that results in overspending of the government’s Social Security budget, and secondly by impairing the welfare of American citizens in a frenzied attempt to compensate for said overspending, Social Security is doing more harm than good.
We should also delve into the issues that arise when a wronged Social Security recipient tries to investigate why exactly their money is being taken from them. Most interestingly, when a case is referred to a judge, the jurisdiction remains within the field of Social Security employees. Kind of like prosecuting a criminal with the same criminal as the judge, right?
While Social Security is technically not doing anything criminal, it is screwing people over. Watching yet another chunk of cash disappear from your check every week was only made it worth it by the thought that one day that cash will be returned to you. Apparently, that is no longer the case because instead that cash has to be used to fix a subcommittee’s excessive expenditures. At least if Social Security goes bankrupt because the federal government is borrowing too much, we won’t have to deal with it anymore.
