Ronald Reagan’s most famous quote may have been: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” As we quickly roll into the full-blown election season, I’m sure that even illiterate MAGAt politicians will find innumerable occasions to quote and misquote The Gipper as they continue their ongoing efforts to slander and delegitimize (and, of course, to defund) the many government agencies and programs that serve tens of millions of their own party members. In the old days, certain sensitive topics were verboten - especially for conservative Republicans - but those days are long gone. Apparently any fool in Congress can say or threaten to do anything without the slightest concern that the MAGA folks back home will care or change their hardcore beliefs and behaviors.

It’s not difficult to understand why these radical Republican mopes target Medicare and Social Security, which are such easy targets and low-hanging fruit. But it’s impossible to understand how the very voters who would be most adversely impacted by the proposed cuts continue to support and vote for them. Attacking the courts, the “government,” the poor, law enforcement, abortion, and LGBTQ+ is now SOP in the dregs of the Trump decade.

The indisputable fact that many of these agencies, such as the IRS, do a fairly poor job of serving the public is, of course, due in no small part to the Republicans’ perpetual refusal to properly staff and fund them. That’s often accompanied by the steady beat of GOP-fomented lawsuits aimed to limit or entirely abolish various agencies and regulators.  The cases then provide an ultimate forum for the bought-and-paid-for justices of the Supreme Court to continue to misinterpret and dismember long-standing precedents, legislation, and other crucial regulatory policies, which they (and their financial sponsors) reject.

But, in the case of Social Security, it’s pretty clear that the SSA shares a great deal of the blame for the problems that so many of us face either directly or through the ordeals of our older friends and relatives. We’ve experienced decades of mismanagement, misinformation and mistakes that continue from the bureaucrats. In virtually every instance, these faceless automatons are trained to recite a frightening but all too true mantra: “I didn’t say it’s your fault; I said I’m blaming you.” You may have been given incomplete information, your payments may have been miscalculated, you may have been provided with inaccurate or completely wrong guidance by Social Security personnel, but in the end the blame is all yours.

 But, having said all that, we may finally be at a breaking point. 

Under direction from Congress, the powers that be at Social Security have in just over the last two years launched a major “clawback” effort to retrieve more than $21 billion in payments made to more than two million taxpayers. The recapture program continues today. To be fair, the number is a small portion of the $1.4 trillion in benefits the administration sends out to 71 million Americans every year. Still, aiming at these least informed, most vulnerable, and unsuspecting segments of the population -- who are unlikely to be able to afford competent counsel -- who have regular and detailed documentation of the fact that, when they made timely inquiries, they were misdirected, ignored, or flat out lied to about their cases, is only the beginning of the outrage.

The “clawbacks” are implemented and executed - most often without clear and sufficient notice or adequate explanation - by the SSA offices either through abruptly seizing the funds from the taxpayer's bank accounts or immediately terminating or reducing monthly payments being made to them. As you might imagine, the resultant chaos for people who depend on these regular payments and whose bank accounts are suddenly depleted, is severe, unsettling to say the least, and completely unfair.  Especially when it’s clear in most of the cases that the errors were made NOT by the taxpayer but by the government, which improperly determined the amounts due and allegedly “overpaid” the amounts due.

As suggested above, you may not be of a sufficient age yet to be concerned about the actual payments that would be due, but understand that millions of parents, relatives, and older friends and business associates may be subject to these risks and problems right now and not have any idea of what’s about to hit them. Even more importantly, we all know people who have been provided with completely wrong information from Social Security about how and when and which benefits they are entitled to and which they should start to take or defer in order to create later, larger benefits.

Even if the SSA personnel meant well and tried, they are basically not up to the task. As a result, there are probably just as many millions of taxpayers who are being screwed out of retirement funds by bad advice and instructions as there are individuals now being targeted for improper overpayments that weren’t their fault.

There is a relatively simple and cost-effective solution created by an economics professor and financial expert, Larry Kotlikoff, which is called Maximize My Social Security. This software calculates all of the alternative scenarios for any given taxpayer in minutes. And, by the way, it’s not A.I., it’s not magic, it’s just math, plain and simple. It’s also not free, but if you know someone in need, it’s a far better investment than wasting hours on the phone trying to get through and then getting answers and explanations from Social Security.

The much better and simpler answer would be for the SSA system to provide a simple and inexpensive tool like this to their service people so that they would know what they were talking about. They could actually help the public in reaching the right actions that each individual taxpayer should take. Terry Savage, another financial expert, suggested that maybe Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffet could buy the Maximize program and gift it to Social Security in honor of his late friend and business partner Charlie Munger.