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Acting Social Security Commissioner will launch a “full investigation” Monday into Inspector General Gail Ennis’ oversight of an anti-fraud program that has imposed severe penalties on people with disabilities and the elderly, a senior agency official said on Saturday.
The action follows a report by the Washington Post that reveals how lawyers responsible for a little-known program run by the Social Security Monitoring Department are issuing unprecedented fines starting with the Trump administration.
More than 100 people who received disability benefits to which they were not entitled were fined up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. These fines were imposed on the poor, the disabled and the elderly, many of whom he had no hope of ever being able to pay.
The current commissioner has “very serious concerns about the issues raised by The Washington Post regarding the Inspector General’s oversight of the program,” said Scott Frey, chief of staff to Kilolo Kijakazi. Kijakazi has scheduled a meeting with his senior staff on Monday “to discuss how to proceed,” Frey said.
How a social security program has amassed huge fines for the poor and disabled
Democrats in the upper house, which oversees the Social Security Administration and its oversight body, also called on President Biden to investigate, calling the sentences “blatant abuse of power.”
“We are outraged by this stunning report,” said Richard E. Neal, chairman of the Roads and Funds Committee, Massachusetts, John B. Larson (Connecticut), chairman of the Social Security Subcommittee, and Danny, chairman of the Workers’ and Families Support Subcommittee. K. Davis (Ill.) Wrote in a statement late Friday.
Lawmakers called on the president and Kijakazi to “quickly investigate this apparent abuse of power, put in place precautions to prevent future abuses and provide relief to all those wrongfully injured.”
A White House spokesman said in an email: “We are aware of the report, but have no further comments.”
A spokesman for the Senate Finance Committee, which also has jurisdiction over social security, said the committee was “assessing a number of steps” in response to the article.
The remarkable penalties issued by the Civil Fines Program began in 2018 as the program was mixed up. The lawyers contradicts federal regulations and deviates from the way the program has recovered money from fraudulent individuals for more than two decades.
The inspector general did not comply recipients their financial situation, their age, their intentions and their degree of remorse, among other factors, according to interviews, documents and affidavits before a judge of administrative law. The staff’s lawyers were charged with charging the affected twice as much money they had received in error, in addition to the fines.
For a seven-month period ending in mid-2019, 83 people were charged a total of $ 11.5 million, according to documents obtained by The Post – a jump of less than $ 700,000 for the whole of 2017.
It is unclear whether this is a full account of those affected by the practice of imposing increased fines, which was stopped by Ennis’ office last year. against the background of ongoing complaints from whistleblowers.
Two senior officials, who have repeatedly expressed concerns about Ennis and her senior staff’s fees since Ennis took office as Trump’s appointee in 2019, have suddenly been placed on administrative leave. Ennis then fired one employee and ordered her staff to reduce the other, Deborah Shaw, a lawyer who was found by a administrative justice judge on the Merit Systems Protection Board in May to have been the victim of “a prime case of revenge. signaling signals’. from Ennis’ office. The office was ordered to reimburse Shaw’s salary and benefits and reinstate her as supervisor.
Ennis had told Shaw and another employee, senior executive director Jocelyn Funny, that she would not renegotiate the sentences because she did not want to draw attention to the program and was worried that Social Security would take her out of her office, according to four acquaintances. with her comments during a staff meeting.
Ennis spokeswoman Rebecca Rose said in an email Saturday that the civilian money program imposes sanctions on those who commit fraud against the Social Security Administration and its trust fund. “The ultimate victims are taxpayers and future, legitimate beneficiaries,” she said.
Rose wrote that the Inspector General “is committed to ensuring that penalties and assessments are imposed fairly, consistently and in accordance with the law.” She said Ennis would respond to “any inquiries from Congress” and keep the current commissioner “informed” of the program’s operations.
The inspectors general in the major agencies have broad autonomy in their work after being confirmed by the Senate. Ennis reports to both Congress and the Social Security Commissioner, but neither engages directly in hiring or political decisions.
Federal oversight bodies are also overseen by the Council of Inspectors-General for Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), which sets policies for the entire government and investigates complaints of misconduct against them.
The group’s chairwoman, Alison Lerner, who is also an observer at the National Science Foundation, said in an interview that “although I cannot comment on any particular inspector general, we have a time-tested process for dealing with allegations of misconduct against inspectors or their inspectors.” direct reports. ”
Ennis was appointed earlier this year to the council’s integrity committee, which is responsible for all investigations. Any member under investigation must withdraw, Lerner said.
Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.
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