Inattention to Verifying Recipients’ Initial and Continuing Eligibility Has Had Negative Effects

nursing home residents continued to receive full SSI benefits. program weakness. SSA’s failure to use this information while waiting for the implementation of an alternative system has left the SSI program open to continued abuse and millions of dollars in potential overpayments. SSA Overpayment Collections Have Received Inadequate Agency Attention

In addition to problems associated with SSA’s verification of important SSI eligibility information, SSA has not placed adequate priority on recovering overpayments, which reached $2.6 billion by 1997. Between 1989 and 1997, SSI debt carried on SSA’s books more than doubled to about $2.6 billion. Although annual overpayment recoveries also increased during this period, the gap between what is owed SSA and what is actually collected each year has continued to widen. Another reason SSI overpayment debt has increased is that SSA does not have and has not adequately pursued the authority to use more aggressive debt collection tools, including the ability to administratively intercept other federal benefit payments recipients may receive, notify credit bureaus of an individual’s indebtedness, use private collection agencies, and charge interest on outstanding SSI debt. Although the agency lacks statutory authority to use these tools to pursue SSI overpayments, in a recent testimony, SSA management acknowledged that such tools are valuable in collecting program overpayments. SSI Program Remains Vulnerable to Fraud and Abuse

In prior work, we identified several SSI program areas subject to fraud and abuse. Since becoming an independent agency in 1995, SSA has begun to take more decisive action to address SSI program fraud and abuse. According to SSA, this new emphasis on early prevention represents a major shift away from how it has traditionally dealt with SSI fraud and abuse. It is too early to tell what immediate and long-term effects SSA’s activities will have on detecting and preventing SSI fraud and abuse. When these write-offs are combined with the SSI debt currently owed the agency, the actual amount of SSI overpayments exceeds $4.4 billion. To a great extent, SSI program problems are attributable to an ingrained organizational culture that has historically placed a greater value on quickly processing and paying SSI claims than on controlling program expenditures. As noted throughout this testimony, SSA is also taking steps to address some of the weaknesses in the SSI program. Supplemental Security Income: Long-standing Problems Put Program at Risk for Fraud, Waste, and Abuse (GAO/T-HEHS-97-88, Mar.
Why GAO Did This Study

GAO discussed the needed changes in the Social Security Administration's (SSA) Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, focusing on SSA's efforts to: (1) verify recipients' initial and continuing eligibility for benefits; (2) deter and collect SSI overpayments; and (3) address SSI program fraud and abuse.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) the SSI program is at considerable risk of waste, fraud, and mismanagement because of an agency culture that has tended to view the SSI program in much the same way as SSA's title II programs--which place emphasis on making payments to an entitled population--rather than as a welfare program that requires stronger income and asset verification policies; (2) because of this culture, SSA has often relied heavily on applicants to self-report important eligibility information, which it has tried to validate with untimely and incomplete verification processes; (3) SSA also continues to lack essential collection tools to pursue SSI overpayments once they are identified and has not made fraud detection and prevention an agencywide workload priority; (4) thus, annual SSI overpayments have increased steadily, program abuses continue to occur, and the gap between overpayments recovered by SSA each year and what is owed the program continues to grow; (5) as outstanding SSI overpayment debt has mounted, annual SSI write-offs have increased; (6) since 1989, SSA has written off more than $1.8 billion in SSI overpayments; (7) these write-offs represent overpaid taxpayer dollars that SSA will probably not recover; (8) more recently, SSA management has focused increasing attention on addressing some of its long-standing SSI program problems and intends to develop a SSI action plan in accordance with the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, which provides agencies with a new uniform framework with which to develop their plans and monitor progress; (9) however, many of SSA's initiatives are still in the planning or early implementation stages, and SSA still lacks a comprehensive long-term strategy for improving SSI program performance; and (10) thus, GAO's concerns about underlying SSI program vulnerabilities remain.