By Robert Laurie ——Bio and Archives--April 15, 2014
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The Social Security Administration announced Monday that it will immediately cease efforts to collect on taxpayers’ debts to the government that are more than 10 years old.
The action comes after The Washington Post reported that the government was seizing state and federal tax refunds that were on their way to about 400,000 Americans who had relatives who owed money to the Social Security agency. In many cases, the people whose refunds were intercepted had never heard of any debt, and the debts dated as far back as the middle of the past century. “I have directed an immediate halt to further referrals under the Treasury Offset Program to recover debts owed to the agency that are 10 years old and older pending a thorough review of our responsibility and discretion under the current law,” the acting Social Security commissioner, Carolyn Colvin, said in a statement.That's great news. Now the question is: Why did the SSA think it had the right to collect debts from people other than the person who originally incurred it? GOP Senator Chuck Grassley made that point yesterday, in a letter he sent to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew:
In a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Monday, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said that government agencies were apparently “not properly notifying individuals or allowing them to inspect records of the debt they supposedly owe, which are violations of the law.” Grassley said that although Congress did authorize the government to seek payment on old debts, the law “says nothing about allowing the government to offset payments from an individual to pay debts not in his or her name. It is unclear where the government has that authority.”We're sure Senator knows this, but the correct answer is: "It's not unclear at all. The authority simply doesn't exist." With the exception of a few rare circumstances, government does not generate wealth. It only confiscates it. The bureaucracy's very existence hinges on maintaining its ever-expanding ability to take. The federal machine is constantly testing the limits of what it can seize and it will always try to get away with whatever it can. Had no one put a spotlight on the treasury's cash grab, it would have been more than happy to let it continue - legal or not. We're not sure if the decision to halt this practice was made due to pressure from The White House, Congress, or the people. It's probably some combination of all three. Regardless, whoever forced their hand - whether they were politicians or media members - they've done the American people a favor. We'll see how long the "halt" lasts but, for the moment, we can put one in the win column.
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