Monday, April 14, 2014 LaVeniaJ.LaVelle,Press Officer
For Immediate Release
press.office@ssa.gov
News
Release
SOCIAL SECURITY
Statement of Carolyn W. Colvin
Acting Commissioner of Social Security
“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 to refer debt to the Treasury Department.
If any Social Security or Supplemental Security Income beneficiary believes they have been incorrectly assessed with an overpayment under this program,
Thinking a Congresswoman is attractive leads to disciplinary action if reduced to writing in an E-mail.
Loose Lips Sink Ships (In this case air ships). Sexually Explicit Speech Can Not Be Tolerated In This New Openly Gay Military.
Navy reassigns ex-Blue Angels commander after complaint he allowed sexual harassment.
SSgt Ryan Crane/US Air Force -
Capt. Greg McWherter, right, then the Blue Angels flight leader, speaks with Col. Mike Hornitschek.
The Navy has reassigned a former commander of the Blue Angels,
its acrobatic fighter squadron, and is investigating allegations that
the elite team of pilots was a hotbed of hazing, sexual harassment and
other forms of discrimination, documents show.
The Navy announced Friday
that it had relieved Capt. Gregory McWherter, a two-time commander of
the Blue Angels, of duty for alleged misconduct. At the time, the Navy
did not describe the nature of the accusations or provide other details
except to say that the case remained under investigation.
But an internal military document that a Navy official
inadvertently e-mailed to a Washington Post editor states that a former
member of the Blue Angels filed a complaint last month accusing
McWherter of promoting a hostile work environment and tolerating sexual
harassment. The complaint described an atmosphere rife with sexually
explicit speech, the open display of pornography and jokes about sexual
orientation.
The Navy officer is the latest in a string of senior
military commanders to come under investigation for sexual misconduct or
other misbehavior. Congress and the White House have grown especially
frustrated at the Pentagon’s struggles to police sex crimes and
harassment in the ranks.
The Navy appeared to move swiftly after
the former Blue Angels member filed the complaint March 24 with the Navy
inspector general. The complaint alleged that McWherter encouraged or
allowed sexual harassment and lewd activity to occur when he commanded
the Blue Angels during two stints between 2008 and 2012.
McWherter
did not respond to e-mails seeking comment. The Navy confirmed the circumstances that led
to the probe. The Navy also released a statement from Vice Adm. David
H. Buss, the commander of Naval Air Forces, who said, “We remain fully
committed to accountability, transparency, and protecting the integrity
of ongoing investigations.”
According to McWherter’s biography,
which the Navy has removed from a public Web site, he is an alumnus of
the Citadel and graduated from the Navy’s famous “Top Gun” fighter pilot
school in 1995. The Blue Angels are a flight demonstration team
that performs daring maneuvers at air shows and before large crowds at
other public events. It is a major honor for pilots selected to join;
the Navy treats the squadron as a valuable recruitment tool and a vivid
symbol of its aviation firepower.
The commander of the unit is chosen by a panel of admirals and serves as the Blue Angels’ lead pilot.
Although
the investigation has not been completed, Navy officials decided that
the preliminary findings warranted taking action. McWherter was fired
from his new job as executive officer of Naval Base Coronado near San
Diego. He has been temporarily reassigned to other duties.
Summaries
of the complaint and investigation are contained in a five-page
internal document, labeled “official use only,” that was drafted by Navy
public affairs officers in anticipation of media coverage.
The
document included talking points and prepared quotes attributed to Navy
admirals, expressing concern about the gravity of the case. The material
was being assembled in the event that further details of the
investigation became public.
McWherter was a commander highly
regarded by many in the Navy. He was brought back to lead the Blue
Angels for a second stint in 2011 after the unit was temporarily
grounded that year for performing a dangerous barrel roll too close to
the ground during a show in Lynchburg, Va.
Upon leaving the team in November 2012, he told the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal that he had no regrets.
“If being with the Blue Angels was the last time I fly a Navy plane, that’s a pretty good way to go out,” he said.
In
the face of several ethics scandals over the past 18 months, the
Pentagon has repeatedly pledged to hold commanders accountable for their
actions. At the same time, however, the military has tried to suppress
details about many embarrassing episodes.
For example, the Army
announced in June, without elaboration, that it had suspended its top
general in Japan for allegedly mishandling a sexual assault case. On
Tuesday, after obtaining a copy of the investigative report under the Freedom of Information Act, The Post disclosed that the general was given a plum job at the Pentagon even though he had violated regulations by failing to refer the sexual assault complaint to criminal investigators.
In January, after obtaining another batch of investigative documents, it was reported that the Pentagon had disciplined three other generals for personal misconduct.
One
was found guilty of assaulting his mistress. A second joked in e-mails
that he sexually gratified himself after meeting a member of Congress
whom he described as “smoking hot.” The third kept a bottle of vodka in
his desk and was investigated for having an affair, according to the
documents.
At the same time, it appears that some military leaders
have become highly sensitive to the issue and are quick to launch
investigations at any hint of sexual impropriety or ethical misbehavior
in the ranks.
In February, the Army announced it had suspended a
brigade commander at Fort Carson, Colo., and in a highly unusual move,
would not allow him to deploy with his soldiers to Afghanistan. Again,
Army officials did not divulge what had prompted the decision.
A
copy of the investigative report in that case, however, shows that the
commander was suspended after three female soldiers alleged that he had
made insensitive comments during a meeting to discuss sexual assault
policies.
The commander, Col. Brian Pearl, was later cleared of wrongdoing and allowed to join his troops in Afghanistan. A copy of the investigative report was first obtained and published Tuesday by the Gazette newspaper of Colorado Springs.
FILE - In this Jan. 29, 2014 file photo, Attorney General Eric ... more >
African American Pastors, a group of conservative, black men of the cloth, say Attorney General Eric Holder ought to be impeached for his stance on gay marriage laws.
The group faulted the entire Obama administration for caving to partisan pressures on the issue — and said the White House
has “sold out” American principles for personal agendas — but that
going after the president would prove fruitless, The Hill reported. So CAAP members are turning to Mr. Holder instead.
“If Obama was a white man, he would be impeached,” said Rev. William Owens,
the group’s founder and president, in The Hill. “Obama has been given a
free pass to do what he pleases, but I don’t give him a pass. I’m very
black, been black all my life. He doesn’t get a pass. I don’t give him a
pass.” CAAP has kicked off a petition to kick Mr. Holder from office via impeachment.
“He will go down in history as the worst attorney general,” said Mr. Owens, in The Hill.
**FILE** Republican presidential hopeful, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, says goodbye to ... more >
The Hill reported that fewer than 100 had signed on to the petition, as of late Tuesday morning. Mr Holder recently advised attorneys general they no longer needed to defend laws in their states — including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Virginia and Oregon — that ban same-sex marriage, if they found the measures to be discriminatory.
His
statement, as reported by The Hill: “Any decision — at any level — not
to defend individual laws must be exceedingly rare. They must be
reserved only for exceptional circumstances. And they must never stem
merely from policy or political disagreements — hinging instead on firm
constitutional grounds.” Mr. Owens said the White House’s use of the civil rights movement to press for same-sex marriage laws was indefensible.
“It’s
a disgrace that [Obama] has stood on the shoulders of Rosa Parks and
martin Luther King Jr.,” he said, The Hill reported. “I detect them
calling this a civil rights movement. It’s not a civil rights movement.
It’s a civil wrongs movement.”
Black pastors demand Eric Holder's IMPEACHMENT after he tells state
attorneys general that they don't have to defend anti-gay marriage laws
The U.S. attorney general believes he's found a way to force the gay-marriage issue in states that refuse to recognize them
Democratic
state attorneys general, Holder said, are justified in sitting on their
hands when state 'traditional marriage' laws are challenged in court
A group of black pastors responded by launching an online petition calling for his impeachment and removal from office
They say Holder swore an oath to protect and defend all laws, not just those he finds morally and ethically acceptable
A group of African-American pastors
stunned Washington on Tuesday by calling for the impeachment and removal
of Eric Holder, the black lawyer who heads the U.S. Department of
Justice. Attorney General
Holder, a longtime friend and ally of President Barack Obama, spoke
Tuesday at the winter meeting of the National Association of Attorneys
General, telling top law enforcers at the state level that laws banning
gay marriage can be cast aside if they believe they encourage illegal
discrimination. 'In
general,' Holder told them, 'I believe that we must be suspicious of
legal classifications based solely on sexual orientation.' 'And we must endeavor in all of our
efforts to uphold and advance the values that once led our forebears to
declare unequivocally that all are created equal and entitled to equal
opportunity.' SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO
+9
Attorney General Eric Holder spoke at the annual
Attorneys General Winter Meeting in Washington, saying that state-level
law enforcement chiefs can choose to abandon laws banning same-sex
marriages
+9
The Coalition of African American Pastors
demanded the impeachment of Eric Holder on Tuesday, asking 1 million
Americans to sign a petition aimed at giving Congress political cover
+9
Times are changing: Plaintiffs celebrated a
Virginia ruling that struck down the state's same-sex marriage ban after
the state's new attorney general, Mark Herring, chose not to defend it
in court
Holder's speech came
just weeks after Holder ordered Justice Department employees to give
legal same-sex marriages equal consideration, even in states where such
unions are not recognized. The
result of his latest remarks is a new federal government-sanctioned
license, covering attorneys general who refuse to defend 'traditional
marriage' laws when they are challenged in court. That has angered the
Coalition of African American Pastors, which said it aims to collect 1
million signatures on an impeachment petition that blames Holder for
violating his oath of office by picking and choosing which laws to
enforce on the basis of his personal beliefs.
'President Obama
and Attorney General Eric Holder have turned their backs on the values
the American people hold dear,' the group said, 'values particularly
cherished in the black community: values like marriage, which should be
strengthened and promoted, rather than weakened and undermined. Addressing
Holder's move to bring state attorneys general along, the group accused
him in a statement of trying to 'coerce states to fall in line with the
same-sex "marriage" agenda.' Six hours after the coalition's pres conference, its online petition to Congress had collected fewer than 4,000 signatures.
+9
Rev. Bill Owens (4th from L) said Tuesday that Holder 'will go down in history as the worst attorney general'
+9
The gay marriage debate has divided America, with supporters seeming to have captured the momentum in recent years
+9
Blacks and evangelicals are the two demographic
groups most opposed to same-sex marriages, a fact brought into sharp
relief by Tuesday's launch of a black pastors' movement to impeach
Holder
'Attorney General Holder
has attempted to undermine the states’ authority ... specifically with
his latest directives to Department of Justice employees to interpret
same-sex "marriage" status as broadly as possible even in those states
which do not recognize these unions,' the petition reads in part. 'The Attorney General has brazenly overstepped the bounds of his authority and he must be held accountable.'
+9
Newly minted Democratic Virginia Attorney
General Mark Herring believed his state's ban on same-sex marriage was
unconstitutional, so he has chosen not to defend it -- a move Eric
Holder hopes more of Herring's colleagues will embrace
Members of the Republican Attorneys
General Association, the more conservative half of Holder's Tuesday
morning audience, slammed him for his selective approach to law
enforcement. 'A state
attorney general has a solemn duty to the state and its people to defend
state laws and constitutional provisions against challenge under
federal law,' Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange said in a
statement. 'To refuse to do
so because of personal policy preferences or political pressure erodes
the rule of law on which all of our freedoms are founded. A government
that does not enforce the law equally will lead our society to
disrespect the rule of law.' But
six Democratic state attorneys general, including Virginia newcomer
Mark Herring, have chosen to sit on their hands while gay advocacy
groups and individual plaintiffs have sued over state laws that limit
the definition of 'marriage' to a union between one man and one woman. Herring's
inaction paved the way for a federal judge to strike down a state
constitutional amendment banning gay marriages. The case will be
appealed, but only as a procedural matter aimed at hurrying a final
disposition. The American
Foundation for Equal Rights, a group supporting the plaintiffs in that
case, said Monday that 'loving gay and lesbian couples and their
families should not have to live one more day as second-class citizens
under unjust laws.' Adam
Umhoefer, the group's executive director, said he hoped that 'soon all
Virginians – and hopefully all Americans – will have the freedom to
marry the person they love and their rights fully realized.'
Quieting the masses: President Obama, Eric
Holder and advisor Valerie Jarrett met Feb. 18 with leaders from African
American civil rights groups in the Roosevelt Room of the White House,
but reportedly focused health care and his 'income inequality' platform
Fox News
reported that Ethics and Public Policy Center president Ed Whelan
blasted Holder on Tuesday, saying that 'state attorneys general are
obligated to defend state marriage laws.' Whelan called it 'unfortunate and outrageous that Attorney General Holder doesn't understand that, but it's hardly surprising.' Coalition
of African American Pastors founder Rev. Bill Owens told reporters
Tuesday that 'our leaders in Washington are letting [Holder] get away
with his illegal conduct.' 'He will go down in history as the worst attorney general,' Owens said. The
petition, he added, is meant to give Republicans in Congress 'the
encouragement necessary to remove this dangerous ideologue from public
office.' As gay marriage has
gained legal footholds in more and more states, President Obama's
usually rock-solid African American community has wavered, consistently
polling low approval numbers for the practice. Americans in black households disapprove of gay marriage in larger numbers than any other ethnic subset of the U.S. A June 2013 Pew Research Center survey
found that just 39 per cent of blacks support gay marriage initiatives,
compared with 51 per cent of the larger population. But 69 per cent of blacks also acknowledge that the legal recognition of same-sex marriages is inevitable, according to Pew. Twenty-two
per cent of self-identified evangelical Christians support gay
marriage, while 70 per cent see it as an unstoppable social force. That
combined gulf – between black Christians' desires and their practical
predictions – presents a public opinion-shaping opportunity that the
pastoral coalition hopes to take advantage of.
+9
Unstoppable: Most blacks and evangelicals
concede that despite their objections, gay marriage rights are likely to
steamroll their way into American history
Owens also said Tuesday that he would move to impeach the president if it were practical to do so. 'If Obama was a white man, he would be impeached,' he told reporters. 'Obama
has been given a free pass to do what he pleases, but I don’t give him a
pass. I’m very black. Been black all my life. He doesn’t get a pass.' Owens
called it unfortunate that the president has drawn lines of equivalency
between the gay rights movement and the earlier Civil Rights movement
aimed at correcting historical injustices against blacks in the U.S. 'It's a disgrace that this man has stood on the shoulders of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.," Owens said. 'I detest them calling this a civil rights movement. It's not a civil rights movement; it's a civil wrongs movement.' But
Holder has persisted in treating gay rights as a natural heir to the
1960s movement that relegated ordinary discrimination of
African-Americans, now considered shocking and unacceptable, to
America's historical dust-heap. 'If
I were attorney general in Kansas in 1953, I would not have defended a
Kansas statute that put in place separate-but-equal facilities,' Holder
told The New York Times. According to The Washington Times,
Holder has told The New Yorker in an interview for a future article
that he will likely step down by the end of 2014, but plans on staying "well into" the year.
Social Security, Treasury target taxpayers for their parents’ decades-old debts.
Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post -
Mary Grice of Takoma Park, MD, talks with her attorney Robert Vogel, at Vogel's home in Rockville Maryland, April 5, 2014.
A few weeks ago, with no notice,
the U.S. government intercepted Mary Grice’s tax refunds from both the
IRS and the state of Maryland. Grice had no idea that Uncle Sam had
seized her money until some days later, when she got a letter saying
that her refund had gone to satisfy an old debt to the government — a
very old debt.
When Grice was 4, back in 1960, her father died, leaving her
mother with five children to raise. Until the kids turned 18, Sadie
Grice got survivor benefits from Social Security to help feed and clothe
them.
Now, Social Security claims it overpaid someone in the Grice
family — it’s not sure who — in 1977. After 37 years of silence, four
years after Sadie Grice died, the government is coming after her
daughter. Why the feds chose to take Mary’s money, rather than her
surviving siblings’, is a mystery.
Across the nation, hundreds of
thousands of taxpayers who are expecting refunds this month are instead
getting letters like the one Grice got, informing them that because of a
debt they never knew about — often a debt incurred by their parents —
the government has confiscated their check.
The Treasury
Department has intercepted $1.9 billion in tax refunds already this year
— $75 million of that on debts delinquent for more than 10 years, said
Jeffrey Schramek, assistant commissioner of the department’s debt
management service. The aggressive effort to collect old debts started
three years ago — the result of a single sentence tucked into the farm bill lifting the 10-year statute of limitations on old debts to Uncle Sam.
No
one seems eager to take credit for reopening all these long-closed
cases. A Social Security spokeswoman says the agency didn’t seek the
change; ask Treasury. Treasury says it wasn’t us; try Congress.
Congressional staffers say the request probably came from the
bureaucracy.
The only explanation the government provides for
suddenly going after decades-old debts comes from Social Security
spokeswoman Dorothy Clark: “We have an obligation to current and future
Social Security beneficiaries to attempt to recoup money that people
received when it was not due.”
Since the drive to collect on very old debts began in 2011, the Treasury Department has collected $424
million in debts that were more than 10 years old. Those debts were
owed to many federal agencies, but the one that has many Americans
howling this tax season is the Social Security Administration, which has
found 400,000 taxpayers who collectively owe $714 million on debts more
than 10 years old. The SSA expects to have begun proceedings against
all of those people by this summer.
“It was a shock,” said Grice,
58. “What incenses me is the way they went about this. They gave me no
notice, they can’t prove that I received any overpayment, and they use
intimidation tactics, threatening to report this to the credit bureaus.”
Grice
filed suit against the Social Security Administration in federal court
in Greenbelt,MD., alleging that the government violated her right
to due process by holding her responsible for a $2,996 debt supposedly
incurred under her father’s Social Security number. Social
Security officials told Grice that six people — Grice, her four
siblings and her father’s first wife, whom she never knew — had received
benefits under her father’s account. The government doesn’t look into
exactly who got the overpayment; the policy is to seek compensation from
the oldest sibling and work down through the family until the debt is
paid.
The Federal Trade Commission, on its Web site,
advises Americans that “family members typically are not obligated to
pay the debts of a deceased relative from their own assets.” But Social
Security officials say that if children indirectly received assistance
from public dollars paid to a parent, the children’s money can be
taken, no matter how long ago any overpayment occurred.
“While we
are responsible for collecting delinquent debts owed to taxpayers, we
understand the importance of ensuring that debtors are treated fairly,”
Treasury’s Schramek said in a statement. He said Treasury requires that debtors be given due
process. Social Security spokeswoman Clark, who declined to
discuss Grice’s or any other case, even with the taxpayer’s permission,
said the agency is “sensitive to concerns about our attempts to arrange
repayment of overpayments.” She said that before taking any money,
Social Security makes “multiple attempts to contact debtors via the U.S.
Mail and by phone.”
Grice, who works for the Food and Drug
Administration and lives in Takoma Park, in the same apartment she’s
resided in since 1984, never got any notice about a debt. Social
Security officials told her they had sent their notice to her post
office box in Roxboro, N.C. Grice rented that box from 1977 to 1979 and
never since. And Social Security has Grice’s current address: Every
year, it sends her a statement about her benefits.
“Their record-keeping seems to be very spotty,” she said.
Treasury
officials say that before they will take someone’s refund, the agency
owed the money must certify the debt, meaning there must be evidence of
the overpayment.But Social Security officials told Grice they had no
records explaining the debt.
“The craziest part of this whole
thing is the way the government seizes a child’s money to satisfy a debt
that child never even knew about,” says Robert Vogel, Grice’s attorney.
“They’ll say that somebody got paid for that child’s benefit, but the
child had no control over the money and there’s no way to know if the
parent ever used the money for the benefit of that kid.”
Grice,
the middle of five children, said neither of her surviving siblings —
one older, one younger — has had any money taken by the government. When
Grice asked why she had been selected to pay the debt, she was told it
was because she had an incomeand her address popped up — the correct
one this time. Grice
found a lawyer willing to take her case without charge. Vogel is
exercised about the constitutional violations he sees in the retroactive
lifting of the 10-year limit on debt collection. “Can the government
really bring back to life a case that was long dead?” the lawyer asked.
“Can it really be right to seize a child’s money to satisfy a parent’s
debt?”
But many other taxpayers whose refunds have been taken say
they’ve been unable to contest the confiscations because of the cost,
because Social Security cannot provide records detailing the original
overpayment, and because the citizens, following advice from the IRS to keep financial documents for just three years, had long since trashed their own records. In
Glenarm, Ill., Brenda and Mike Samonds have spent the past year trying
to figure out how to get back the $189.10 tax refund the government
seized, claiming that Mike’s mother, who died 33 years ago, had been
overpaid on survivor’s benefits after Mike’s father died in 1969.
“It
was never Mike’s money, it was his mother’s,” Brenda Samonds said. “The
government took the money first and then they sent us the letter. We
could never get one sentence from them explaining why the money was
taken.” The government mailed its notice about the debt to the house
Mike’s mother lived in 40 years ago.
The Social Security
spokeswoman said the agency uses a private contractor to seek current
addresses and is supposed to halt collections if notices are returned as
undeliverable.
After hours on the phone trying and failing to get
information about the debt Mike’s mother was said to owe, the Samondses
gave up.
After waiting on hold for two hours with Social Security
last week, Ted Verbich also concluded it wasn’t worth the time or money
to fight for the $172 the government intercepted last month.
In
1977, Verbich, now 57, was in college at the University of Maryland when
he took a full-time job in an accountant’s office. Because he was
earning income, he knew he had to give up the survivor’s benefits his
mother had received since his father died, when Verbich was 4. But his
$70 monthly checks — “They helped with the car payment,” he said — kept
coming for a short time after he started work, and Verbich was notified
in 1978 that he had to repay about $600. He did. Thirty-six
years later, with no notice, “they snatched my Maryland tax refund,”
said Verbich, a federal worker who has lived at the same address in
Glendale, Md,. for 30 years and regularly receives Social Security
statements there. The feds insisted that he owed $172 but could provide
no documents to back up the claim.
Verbich has given up on getting his refund, but he wants a receipt stating that his debt to his country is resolved.
“I’ll put in the request,” a Social Security clerk told Verbich, “but in reality, you’ll never get anything.”
Grice
was also told there was little point in seeking a waiver of her debt.
Collections can only be halted if the person passes two tests, Clark
said: The taxpayer must prove that he “is without fault, and [that]
repayment of the overpayment would deprive the person of income needed
for ordinary living expenses.”
More than 1,200 appeals have been filed on the old cases, Clark said; taxpayers have won about 10 percent of those appeals.
The
Treasury initially held the full amount of Grice’s federal and state
refunds, a total of $4,462. Last week, after The Washington Post
inquired about Grice’s case, the government returned the portion of her
refund above the $2,996 owed on her father’s account.
But unless the feds can prove that she ever received any of the overpayment, Grice wants all of her money back.
“Look,
I love a good fight, especially for principle,” she said. “My mom used
to say, ‘This country is carried on the backs of the little people,’ and
now I see what she meant. This is really sad.”
(Fisher, Mard, The Washington Post, April 11, 2014, p. A1)
CNBC (Apr 11, 2014)
US seizing tax refunds of children over parents' debt?!
The government is now going through old
records to see if it overpaid people on Social Security. If it thinks it
did, it can now seize the IRS tax refund checks of the CHILDREN of
those people it thinks it overpaid. This isn't a proposal—it's already happening. For the past three years, the government has been confiscating hundreds of thousands of Americans' tax refunds, according to the Washington Post. It has already confiscated $1.9 billion in tax refunds this year alone.
Peter Zander | Workbook Stock | Getty Images
The amazing thing is that the government
is doing this even if it has little or no proof and no exact details.
And the letters the government sends to unsuspecting taxpayers are
frightening, use accusatory language, and include other financial
threats. "They gave me no notice,
they can't prove that I received any overpayment, and they use
intimidation tactics, threatening to report this to the credit bureaus,"
Mary Grice, who had her tax refunds seized a few weeks ago, is quoted
as saying. As
usual, no one in the government is willing to take the responsibility
for this new policy—Social Security said it didn't do it, ask the
Treasury Department. Treasury said—ask Congress. If you think this is some kind of unprecedented outrage, you're right. But here's some advice: get used to it.
Tax refunds are clearly becoming the new
promised land for government regulators and bureaucrats desperate for
more revenues. We already know that confiscating tax refunds are the
only real way the IRS will be able to impose Obamacare non-compliance penalties, and now it seems like the Social Security Administration is jumping on that bandwagon. But
there's a more powerful and disturbing message here. Remember that the
people who benefited from these alleged Social Security payments have
not committed any crime—that's why the government doesn't need to
provide any proof or real documentation. It's more likely that the SSA
simply screwed up and expects the descendants of its accidental
beneficiaries to pay up. And again, the money comes out first before you
can protest and find out why. So,
now we have yet another very good reason to make sure you don't get a
tax refund. First, getting a tax refund means you've given the
government a free loan for 12 months. Second,
tax refunds are the only way you can be punished—rightly or wrongly—for
any ObamaCare (Affordable Care Act) individual mandate non-compliance. And third, your tax refund
is now a possible target for government bureaucrats who screwed up in
the past and want to come after your money to make it right. If the SSA
can do it, what's to stop the other agencies?
After hearing this story, you wouldn't
think anyone would have to remind the public that Washington already
controls too much of their money and has trampled on too much of our
financial rights. But I will anyway since so many politicians and other
elites don't seem to be backing down on their incessant calls for more
regulations, oversight and of course, more taxes. Once again, we have a case of the government saying: "When you screw up, you pay. When we screw up, you also pay." If only our elected leaders would be so honest with us at election time. This is commentary from Jake Novak, the supervising producer of "Street Signs."
Government suspends controversial program to recover money from adult children of dead taxpayers
FoxNews.com
The Social Security Administration announced Monday it is
suspending a controversial program that goes after adult children of
deceased taxpayers who the government claims were recipients of
overpayments more than a decade ago. Acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn W. Colvin said she has
directed an immediate halt to the three-year-old program while the
agency does a review. The controversial program seized tax refunds in an
effort to recoup the funds.
The move to stop the program came after many of the recipients and members of Congress complained to the federal agency.
"While this policy of seizing tax refunds to repay decades-old Social
Security overpayments might be allowed under the law, it is entirely
unjust," Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Barbara
Mikulski of Maryland said in a letter to Colvin.
The program was authorized by a 2008 change in the law that allows
Social Security and other federal agencies to use a Treasury program to
seize federal payments to recoup debts that are more than 10 years old.
Previously, there was a 10-year limit on using the program.
In most cases, the seizures are done through tax refunds.
The change was tucked into the 2008 farm bill -- but trying to track
down which lawmaker added in the one line that lifted the 10-year
statute hasn’t been easy. And, not surprisingly, Washington lawmakers
haven’t been eager to step up to the plate and take the blame.
Leslie Paige, vice president of policy and communications at Citizens
Against Government Waste, says it’s a common problem in Congress.
“Lawmakers try to sneak in these one or two lines into gigantic
legislative packages,” Paige told FoxNews.com. “It’s a dirty little
secret. Members of Congress don’t know what they are voting on most of
the time.”
Paige said the “unintended consequences” of these bills are felt
hardest on Americans often left powerless to fight the federal
government.
“All [lawmakers] care about is ‘Did my pork, my earmark, my little provision get into this gigantic mess of a bill?’” she said. Following Colvin’s announcement Monday, Boxer said in a statement: "I
am grateful that the Social Security Administration has chosen not to
penalize innocent Americans while the agency determines a fair path
forward on how to handle past errors."
Mikulski added, "Garnishing these refunds to collect overpayments
incurred through no fault of their own and based on decades-old errors
is a policy that must not continue."
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, praised the Social Security
Administration for suspending the debt collection but continued to raise
questions Monday about how this started.
"It's not clear where that authority came in. There's a difference
between collecting decades-old debt from the debtors and decades-old
debt from their kids," he said.
The Social Security Administration says it has identified about 400,000 people with old debts. They owe a total of $714 million.
So far, the agency says it has collected $55 million.
Colvin said she was suspending the program "pending a thorough review
of our responsibility and discretion under the current law to refer
debt to the Treasury Department."
"If any Social Security or Supplemental Security Income beneficiary
believes they have been incorrectly assessed with an overpayment under
this program, I encourage them to request an explanation or seek options
to resolve the overpayment," Colvin said.
The Washington Post first reported on the program.
There are several scenarios in which people may have received
overpayments as children. For example, when a parent of a minor child
dies, the child may be eligible for survivor's benefits, which are
typically sent to the surviving parent or guardian.
If there was an overpayment made on behalf of the child, that child could be held liable years later, as an adult.
Also, if a child is disabled, he or she may receive overpayments.
Those overpayments would typically be taken out of current payments,
once they are discovered.
But if disability payments were discontinued because the child's
condition improved, Social Security could try to recoup the overpayments
years later.
"We want to assure the public that we do not seek restitution through
tax refund offset in cases when the debt in question was established
prior to the debtor turning 18 years of age," Social Security spokesman
Mark Hinkle said in an email. "Also, we do not use tax refund offset to
collect the debt of a person's relative — we only use it to collect the
overpaid benefits the person received for himself or herself."
Hinkle said the debt collection could be waived if the person is
without fault and repayment would "deprive the person of income needed
for ordinary living expenses or would be unfair for another reason."
The Associated Press contributed to this report This is commentary from Jake Novak, the supervising producer of "Street Signs."
FORT THOMAS, Ky. – Cathy Frost opened her mail last week
expecting to receive her tax refund. Instead, the Treasury Department
sent her a notice that Uncle Sam was keeping her $344.
"I was taken aback. I had already allocated the funds. I couldn't believe it," the Fort Thomas woman said Friday.
"I didn't know the government could just keep your refund. I felt like I was being robbed." Thousands of Americans had the same feeling when they got the same letter.
Most
of them didn't know that the Treasury Department has been confiscating
tax refunds to recover government over-payments - mainly in Social
Security benefits - from beneficiaries or their survivors.
Some of the debts, as in Frost's case, are their parents' and are decades old.
There
was such an outcry from taxpayers and politicians that the Social
Security Administration announced this week that it was going to stop
seizing tax refunds pending an SSA review. But that doesn't help Frost, a 55-year-old single woman who just lost her job due to downsizing.
She
found out she might not get her money back, even though the SSA
overpaid her father – and not her - some 40 years ago, when Frost was a
minor.
The whole episode has left her shaking her head, frustrated with her government.
Frost said she called the 800 number on the letter last week and talked with an SSA office worker in Chicago.
"They
were unable to give me any details, only that there was an overpayment
of $869.20 that may have been dispersed to myself or any family member,"
she said.
Frost said she told the SSA rep that her father had died when she was 18.
"I
wasn't eligible for benefits, but my younger brother was 17 and my
sister was 15, so they would have received benefits for a short period
of time," she said.
"It could even have been my father, because my mother died when I was 9, so he might have received benefits from her.
"They said, 'Well, that must have been it.' But they couldn't tell me for sure. They said they didn't have any details.
"They said all they could do is take a request to have somebody contact me and send me more information.
"I thought, 'This is insane! How could people do that? And this is our government!' "
When
the SSA announced that it was suspending the seizure program, the
agency directed Frost and other taxpayers to visit a field office and
request a waiver for the overpayment.
Frost said she went to the SSA office in Florence on Good Friday, April 18th. "They
checked the records and told me it was an overpayment to my father when
I was a minor, so I'm eligible for a waiver," she said. "They gave me a
list of things I'm supposed to turn in, and if they determine I'm not
able to afford the overpayment, they will waive it."
Talk about government red tape.
The
SSA wants to see Frost's rent or mortgage payments, utilities, loans
and credit card payments, medical and dental payments, insurance,
property taxes and other fees and obligations, she said.
Before she left the office, the staffer gave her a list of local attorneys, she said.
She said she's thinking about calling one.
"We're
not talking about that much money, and they'd probably decide I'm able
to afford it. But I don't make that much and I just got downsized from
Avon after 17 years," Frost said.
"It doesn't seem fair for the
government to penalize me for something that happened when I was a
minor, that I was not a part of."
She said the government did not seize her brother's or sister's tax refunds - only hers.
The Social Security Administration says it has identified about 400,000 people with old debts. They owe a total of $714 million.
So far, the agency says it has collected $55 million.
There
used to be a 10-year limit on collecting old debts, but thanks to an
unidentified legislator who slipped a rider into the 2008 farm bill, the
government can legally recover any overpayment, even from 40 years ago. "It's totally nuts," Frost said.
Government suspends controversial program to recover money from adult children of dead taxpayers
FoxNews.com
The Social Security Administration announced Monday it is
suspending a controversial program that goes after adult children of
deceased taxpayers who the government claims were recipients of
overpayments more than a decade ago. Acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn W. Colvin said she has
directed an immediate halt to the three-year-old program while the
agency does a review. The controversial program seized tax refunds in an
effort to recoup the funds.
The move to stop the program came after many of the recipients and members of Congress complained to the federal agency.
"While this policy of seizing tax refunds to repay decades-old Social
Security overpayments might be allowed under the law, it is entirely
unjust," Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Barbara
Mikulski of Maryland said in a letter to Colvin.
The program was authorized by a 2008 change in the law that allows
Social Security and other federal agencies to use a Treasury program to
seize federal payments to recoup debts that are more than 10 years old.
Previously, there was a 10-year limit on using the program.
In most cases, the seizures are done through tax refunds.
The change was tucked into the 2008 farm bill -- but trying to track
down which lawmaker added in the one line that lifted the 10-year
statute hasn’t been easy. And, not surprisingly, Washington lawmakers
haven’t been eager to step up to the plate and take the blame.
Leslie Paige, vice president of policy and communications at Citizens
Against Government Waste, says it’s a common problem in Congress.
“Lawmakers try to sneak in these one or two lines into gigantic
legislative packages,” Paige told FoxNews.com. “It’s a dirty little
secret. Members of Congress don’t know what they are voting on most of
the time.”
Paige said the “unintended consequences” of these bills are felt
hardest on Americans often left powerless to fight the federal
government.
“All [lawmakers] care about is ‘Did my pork, my earmark, my little provision get into this gigantic mess of a bill?’” she said. Following Colvin’s announcement Monday, Boxer said in a statement: "I
am grateful that the Social Security Administration has chosen not to
penalize innocent Americans while the agency determines a fair path
forward on how to handle past errors."
Mikulski added, "Garnishing these refunds to collect overpayments
incurred through no fault of their own and based on decades-old errors
is a policy that must not continue."
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, praised the Social Security
Administration for suspending the debt collection but continued to raise
questions Monday about how this started.
"It's not clear where that authority came in. There's a difference
between collecting decades-old debt from the debtors and decades-old
debt from their kids," he said.
The Social Security Administration says it has identified about 400,000 people with old debts. They owe a total of $714 million.
So far, the agency says it has collected $55 million.
Colvin said she was suspending the program "pending a thorough review
of our responsibility and discretion under the current law to refer
debt to the Treasury Department."
"If any Social Security or Supplemental Security Income beneficiary
believes they have been incorrectly assessed with an overpayment under
this program, I encourage them to request an explanation or seek options
to resolve the overpayment," Colvin said.
The Washington Post first reported on the program.
There are several scenarios in which people may have received
overpayments as children. For example, when a parent of a minor child
dies, the child may be eligible for survivor's benefits, which are
typically sent to the surviving parent or guardian.
If there was an overpayment made on behalf of the child, that child could be held liable years later, as an adult.
Also, if a child is disabled, he or she may receive overpayments.
Those overpayments would typically be taken out of current payments,
once they are discovered.
But if disability payments were discontinued because the child's
condition improved, Social Security could try to recoup the overpayments
years later.
"We want to assure the public that we do not seek restitution through
tax refund offset in cases when the debt in question was established
prior to the debtor turning 18 years of age," Social Security spokesman
Mark Hinkle said in an email. "Also, we do not use tax refund offset to
collect the debt of a person's relative — we only use it to collect the
overpaid benefits the person received for himself or herself."
Hinkle said the debt collection could be waived if the person is
without fault and repayment would "deprive the person of income needed
for ordinary living expenses or would be unfair for another reason."
The Associated Press contributed to this report
House
Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Charles Boustany, and Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Sam Johnson seek answers on Treasury debt recovery program
By
House
Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Charles Boustany
(R-La.) and Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Sam Johnson
(R-Texas) recently sought answers about the Treasury Department’s Offset
Program and its effects on children who once received Social Security
benefits.
Boustany and Johnson wrote to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and acting
Social Security Administration Commissioner Carolyn Colvin about recent
reports that adults who may have once received Social Security benefits
as children had their tax refunds withheld for overpayments made decades
ago to their parents.
The parents of some of the affected citizens are deceased and many of
the taxpayers never received notice that they owed a debt as provided
under law.
Colvin announced last week that the SSA would stop additional
referrals of debts to the Treasury Department owed to Social Security
that are 10 years or older for collection under the Treasury Offset
Program.
“SSA’s decision to stop referrals was the right thing to do,”
Boustany and Johnson said. “However, Treasury and Social Security still
owe an explanation to the American people. While the government must
protect taxpayer dollars, it is difficult to justify the practice of
seizing innocent Americans’ tax refunds to pay debts resulting from
benefits they may or may not have received when they were children, with
little or no notice or evidence documenting the overpayment. The sooner
we have those answers the sooner we can work to protect Americans from
agency actions that are harsh and unfair.”
The Washington Post reported on April 10 that the Treasury has
intercepted $1.9 billion in tax refunds this year, including $75 million
of delinquent debts 10 years of age or older. Additionally, 400,000
taxpayers who owe a total of $714 million in debts more than 10 years
old have been identified by SSA.
‘Government suspends controversial program to recover money from adult children of dead taxpayers’
In the words of 2 people I spoke to about this story – “How can this be legal?”
Good question. At least they’re stopping it.
(From FoxNews.com)
The Social Security Administration announced Monday it is suspending a
controversial program that goes after adult children of deceased
taxpayers who the government claims were recipients of overpayments more
than a decade ago.
Acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn W. Colvin said she has
directed an immediate halt to the three-year-old program while the
agency does a review. The controversial program seized tax refunds in an
effort to recoup the funds.
"Government suspends controversial program to recover money from adult children of dead taxpayers." Foxnews.com, 2014-04-14.
About Nick Sorrentino
Nick Sorrentino is the co-founder and editor of
AgainstCronyCapitalism.org. A political and communications consultant
with clients across the political spectrum, his work has been featured
at Breitbart.com, Reason.com, NPR.com, Townhall, The Daily Caller,
and many other publications. A graduate of Mary Washington College he
lives just outside of Washington DC where he can keep an eye on
Leviathan.
Purported debt from the past coming back to haunt local man, others
Mike Beaudet
By: Mike Beaudet Kevin Rothstein, Producer
(MyFoxBoston.com)
-- Jack Earle was just a boy 48 years ago when his father died of a
heart attack, a tragedy that also led to his and his young siblings
receiving the Social Security benefits his father would have been given
had he lived to see retirement.
Earle went on to
become a career Army man and then move to a civilian job. Approaching
his own retirement, he was shocked then to find that his tax refund this
year was being held back by the IRS for a debt he had no idea he owed.
“I
received a letter in the mail from the IRS garnishing my wages out of
my federal tax check for $352 and I couldn’t figure out why,” he told
FOX Undercover. “They said, ‘This is a garnishment for overpayment of
Social Security.’ I said Social Security? What are you talking about?
‘Well this is from when your father died,’” was the reply, he recalled.
Earle had no idea what the overpayments were from, though he knows he never profited from them.
“My
brothers and I, we never saw any of this money. Maybe if we didn’t see
it because it was putting food on the table or clothing on us or
something like that but to come after myself now 40-plus years later I
think is incredible,” he said.
Earle later learned
that the Social Security Administration believes he received two
different checks in the 1970s that were overpayments, though he has no
record of them and can’t get any records from the government.
“I
told the guy on the phone, I said, ‘He died almost 50 years ago, 48-49
years ago. And for $352 you’re taking money out of me for that?’” he
said. “I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing”
“So
I asked the gentleman on the phone, ‘How many other people is this
affecting? He goes, ‘We’re working on cases right now from the 1970s and
‘80s.’ That just floored me,” he said.
“Does it make you wonder how many other people are getting these same notices?” asked FOX Undercover reporter Mike Beaudet.
“Absolutely,”
Earle replied. “I think that is the main thing I want to find out, how
many other people in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, the United
States does this happen to?”
Plenty, it turns out,
starting with his brother, whose tax refund was garnished last year. The
Social Security Administration says it has identified approximately
400,000 Americans who were overpaid at some point in the past,
overpayments they are now pursuing thanks to an obscure provision passed
by Congress in 2008 allowing the government to collect debts older than
10 years.
The Social Security Administration says in
a statement to FOX Undercover it is owed $714 million in old debts. But
a massive push to collect the debts from tax refunds has also resulted
in widespread confusion.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley,
(R-Iowa), wrote a scathing letter earlier this month to the Social
Security Administration blasting them for problems with the debt
collection.
“It appears that (Social Security
Administration) is notperforming due diligence in notifying individuals
or allowing them to inspect records of the debt they supposedly owe,
which are violations of the law,” he wrote.
That also describes Earles’s struggle to find answers about his supposed past debt, which he is appealing.
The
Social Security Administration has suspended new referrals to the IRS
for debt collection pending a review, though it’s unclear where that
leaves Earle.
“All they told me is that it's for my
father's death, Social Security benefits. That's all they would say to
me,” he said. “At the Social Security office in Worcester, they couldn't
give me any answers. That's all I want. Why are you coming after me 45
years later?” he said.
“You would think the government would have something better to do than this?” Beaudet asked him.
“Correct,”
Earle replied. “There are a lot more people out there doing a lot more
harm to this country than my $352. Go after them.”
Apr 28, 2014 10:00 PM by Rick Spruill
6 Investigates: That Old, Family Debt Could Be Yours To Pay
CORPUS CHRISTI, TX - The notice arrived on Treasury Department letterhead to Inelda Carlisle's mailbox one day this Spring.
They told her that, because her Dad owed money to the Social Security
Administration, they were taking $654.40 from her tax refund to pay his
debt.
Carlisle, an accounting department employee for a local utility company, suspected fraud.
So, she called the 800 number published on the notice. And waited 45
minutes for a representative to give her only a few details.
"The only information they could pull up was 1976 and 1980, and the address," she said.
After several phone calls spent cutting through the red tape, Carlisle was able to piece together the story.
The Social Security Administration audited it's books and found
they'd given her Dad a little too much money as part of a disability
claim, back in the 1970s.
They took Carlisle's refund because they can't go after Ramiro Rodriguez; he's been dead since 1993.
But, a federal farm bill, passed almost six years ago, removed the statute of limitations on the government collecting debts.
A single sentence, inserted in the bill by an unknown lawmaker, removed a barrier to collections.
KRIS-6 asked certified public accountant T. Hardie Bowman, to explain.
"Up until this farm bill was passed we had a 10 year statute of
limitations for federal debts," he Bowman said. "And this new law simply
extends (the) 10 years, retroactively."
And it applies to a variety of benefits, including the disability claim filed by Ramiro Rodriguez.
The program, while allowed under the law, has received universal
resistance. Acting Social Security Commissioner, acting on the backlash,
called a halt to the collections on April 14.
Read her statement, here. - PDF
But for Carlisle, the issue is about what she believes are shady
collection tactics. That's because, until March, she knew nothing of her
father's debt.
She said an official claimed they mailed her a notice: to Tomball, Texas, in 1980.
"In 1980, I was still living in Grand Forks, North Dakota," Carlisle said.
"I deal with customer service and I know what customer service is," she said. "And this is not customer service." U.S. Representative Blake Farenthold said he expects to hear from the Social Security Administration on the collections efforts.
"This looks to me like it violates the due process clause along with common sense," he told KRIS-6 Investigates.
He said if officials are unwilling to guarantee a permanent halt to
the ancient debt collections, more may be done to strip them of the
power to go after children of those who've long since died yet owe Uncle
Sam money.
But you can seek a refund. T. Hardie Bowman said to contact the
Social Security Administration and appeal the collection. If that does
not work, file a form 911 with the Internal Revenue Service.
When California Rep. Jackie Speier is not
chasing military officers looking for sexual sadists, she is following
Social Security Judges trying to "red flag" them. She proposes a system
to review cases from "red flag" judges. Judges who have
high approval rates send up 'red flags'. Speier has had enough. The
Democrat from San Mateo who has been on the front lines fighting to
expose and correct the epidemic of sexual assault and harassment in the
military has turned her attention to her own colleagues. Representative
Speier introduced a bill that would require all House members and staff
to take sexual harassment training every two years. Rep. Jackie Speier, California Democrat, one of the heads the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on health care, say Social Security
employees should be allowed to look at the social media profiles (such as, Facebook, Twitter, etc) of
those applying for disability, reasoning that photos and other
information people post can expose the applicants as able-bodied.
She also said that two Social Security
judges may have approved thousands of bogus disability claims, but the
agency has never gone back to review those judges’ cases to stop the
ones that were fraudulent.
Speier said the agency should come up with a system to review cases from
“red-flag” judges who show inclinations toward rubber-stamping
applications.
In an exhaustive 11-page memo to Social Security acting Commissioner Carolyn W. Colvin, she detailed nearly a
dozen recommendations for improving a disability system that has
received an explosion of applications in recent years and is in danger
of going bankrupt by 2016.
It was indefensible that the Social Security Administration (SSA) hasn’t reviewed applications
approved by two administrative law judges, David B. Daugherty in West
Virginia and Charles Bridges in Pennsylvania, who have been accused of
making bogus disability determinations.
Kia Anderson, a spokeswoman for Social Security, said the SSA takes fraud seriously and will review the lawmakers’ recommendations.
“We
recognize that one case of fraud is too many and work aggressively to
detect and prevent abuses. We continue to enhance our program integrity
efforts by adding tools like data analytics which enables us to identify
patterns of suspicious behavior in disability applications,” she said.
She made a pitch for Congress to grant more funding so the SSA can put more effort into preventing fraud.
The
oversight committee has been looking into the disability issue for some
time and took testimony from Judge Jasper J. Bede, an SSA Regional Chief Administrative Law Judge who told investigators that some judges
appeared to be rubber-stamping applications. (Read more at http://www.amazon.com/socialNsecurity-Confessions-Social-Security-Judge/dp/1449569757) Judge
Bede singled out Judge Bridges, who decided more than 2,000 cases a
year and who often went beyond looking at an applicant’s disability and
considered income or other factors. Judge Daugherty, meanwhile,
approved 99.7 percent of his cases from 2005 through 2011, awarding
disability benefits to 8,413 people — the equivalent of $2.5 billion in
total lifetime benefits.
Major cases of disability fraud have been reported in West Virginia,
Puerto Rico and, most recently, New York City, where investigators said
police officers falsely claimed disability from the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks.
Some of those New York cases were exposed in
part because investigators found online photos of the officers engaged
in flying helicopters, going on deep-sea sport-fishing trips and riding
personal watercraft.
That is one reason lawmakers want Social Security
employees to scour social media before approving applications, and
again when they go back for periodic checks, known as continuing
disability reviews (CDR).
“To increase efficiency and reduce the number
of erroneous disability determinations, SSA personnel should be allowed
to review each applicant’s social media accounts prior to the decision
to award benefits. Additionally, we suggest that SSA require that all
CDRs incorporate a review of the beneficiary’s social media accounts,” Ms. Speier said.
Social Security
has repeatedly refused to let its investigators use social media,
arguing that its judges aren’t trained to evaluate the information.
“Adjudicators
should do what they are trained to do: Review voluminous files to
determine eligibility for disability benefits. Office of Inspector
General fraud investigators should do what they are trained to do:
vigorously follow up on any evidence of fraud,” said Ms. Anderson.
From 2010 through 2012, Americans filed 8.6 million disability claims, but judges and Social Security’s
disability review office reported only 411 suspicions of fraud. That
works out to fewer than one out of every 20,000 applications. Part of the problem is that Social Security is lax in reviewing cases of those deemed temporarily disabled to see whether they have recovered.
But
a review of cases from 1980 through 1983 found 40 percent of those
receiving disability benefits were not disabled, suggesting a tremendous
level of bad payments.
Disability judges who have high approval
rates send up red flags because by the time a case gets to an
administrative law judge, it has already been denied by at least one
previous review at the State DDS, and often by a second DDS review, the two lawmakers said.
That would suggest the approval rate for those cases should be low. Social Security
is made up of two trust funds. The main one is the Old Age and
Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, with the Disability Insurance Trust Fund
accounting for a smaller but growing part of the agency’s work.
I am a thoroughly civilized, humane, cosmopolitan, polished, restrained, enjoyable, entertaining Info-maniac. I am a staunch exponent of individual dignity, freedom, equal access to legal services, and equal protection of the law. Here I hope to demonstrate my emotional restraint, humbleness of sentiment, psychological subtlety, lucid style, and simple language, without evading political reality or eternal truth. Daily I am excited that I have the right to create the beginning of a new self and to challenge old habits and attitudes I no longer choose to accept. I choose to relax in the present with my direction firmly in mind. I have an enormous capacity for creative and clever ideas and thoughts. It is phenomenal what I can do. I am capable of so much learning and absorbing a lot of information. My potential is a source of pleasant surprise for me.
Each day, I increase in knowledge, skills, strength, faith, and abilities.With each adventure, the boundary hemming in my potential expands easily to accomodate my growth and achievements.
House
Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Charles Boustany
(R-La.) and Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Sam Johnson
(R-Texas) recently sought answers about the Treasury Department’s Offset
Program and its effects on children who once received Social Security
benefits.
