RSDI and SSI Recovery Efforts
We have a robust debt collection program to recover all types of overpayments. We collected $3.262 billion in Retirement, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (RSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefit overpayments in fiscal year (FY) 2012, an improvement of $0.06 billion from FY 2011. To recover overpayments, we use internal debt collection techniques (i.e., payment withholding and billing/follow-up), as well as the external collection techniques authorized by the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 for RSDI debts and the Foster Care Independence Act of 1999 for SSI debts. The following table lists some examples of our collection techniques.
| Programmatic Debt Overpayment Recovery Methods ($ in millions) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Recovery Method | Description | FY 2011 | FY 2012 |
| Benefit Withholding | We withhold some or all of the payments for RSDI beneficiaries and SSI recipients as an internal collection technique. | $2,333.1 | $2,404.8 |
| Treasury Offset Program (TOP) | TOP is an automated debt collection tool sponsored by Department of the Treasury (Treasury). | $165.8 | $176.6 |
| Credit Bureau Reporting | We inform credit bureaus about delinquent debts owed by former RSDI beneficiaries or SSI recipients.* | $60.1 | $68.7 |
| Cross Program Recovery – RSDI | We use this collection technique to recover RSDI overpayments before we issue SSI recipients any underpaid amounts. | $33.7 | $31.5 |
| Cross Program Recovery – SSI | We use this collection technique to recover SSI overpayments before we issue any RSDI benefit payments. | $115.6 | $118.5 |
| Administrative Wage Garnishment (AWG) | AWG is a process through which an employer withholds amounts from an employee's wages and pays those amounts to the Federal agency to which the employee owes a delinquent debt. | $19.0 | $20.3 |
| Non-Entitled Debtors (NED) | NED is an automated system that we use to control recovery activity for debts owed by debtors who are not entitled to benefits, such as representative payees who receive overpayments after the death of a beneficiary.** | $3.5 | $3.5 |
| Automatic Netting – SSI | This program automatically nets SSI overpayments against SSI underpayments.*** | $129.2 | $119.0 |
| Other Collections | These are mostly voluntary payments received as a result of a notice requesting refund of an overpayment. | $532.8 | $510.3 |
*This amount is included in the TOP collection total above.
**This amount is included in the TOP, AWG, and Other Collections discussed in the table above.
***The FY2012 netting totals are not included in our FY 2012 overpayment collections of $3.262 billion because overpayments are "netted" before they are established on the SSI recipient's record.