Cross-program Recovery to Collect Overpayments
Office Affiliation: The Office of Audit
Audit Report Number: A-13-15-15029
We issued this report to assess the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) cross-program recovery (CPR) of overpayments, as authorized by the Social Security Protection Act of 2004 (SSPA).
SSA administers the Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs under Titles II and XVI of the Social Security Act, respectively. An overpayment is the total amount an individual received for any period that exceeded the total amount that should have been paid for that period. With a few exceptions, overpaid individuals are responsible for repaying the overpayments.
The enactment of SSPA provided SSA additional authority to recover OASDI overpayments and reaffirmed the Agency’s authority to collect SSI overpayments using CPR. CPR is the process of collecting overpayments for one SSA-administered program by withholding the individual’s payable benefits from another SSA-administered program.