WASHINGTON, D.C. – Four recently finalized rules from the Social Security Administration (SSA) are the latest examples of the Biden-Harris Administration’s expansion of federal power at a substantial cost to taxpayers, write House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO), Work and Welfare Subcommittee Chairman Darin LaHood (R-IL), Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Drew Ferguson (R-GA), Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX), and Budget Committee Oversight Task Force Chair Jack Bergman (R-MI) in a new letter to Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley.

Over the next decade, these Biden-Harris rules from the SSA, which circumvent the fiscal accountability requirements of the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act, will add $37 billion in new, unpaid-for spending within the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Insurance (SSI) programs. 

The Biden-Harris Administration’s failure to offset the costs of these rules will both run up the already unsustainable national debt and further harm the financial health of the Social Security programs. Further, these rules were finalized at a time when the combined Social Security Trust Funds are expected to go bankrupt and be unable to pay full benefits in the next decade. In their letter, Smith, LaHood, Ferguson, Arrington, and Bergman expose the Democrats’ smokescreen justification for the proposed rules:

“Under your leadership, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has quietly finalized four rules that continue the Biden-Harris Administration’s parade of regulatory overreach that circumvents Congress and costs taxpayers billions just months before the 2024 election…During your testimony at a Committee on Ways and Means hearing in March you claimed this rulemaking was done to reduce administrative burdens and simplify benefit calculations. However, the SSA estimates these rules, taken together, would increase program costs by nearly $40 billion while resulting in less than $1 billion in administrative savings. In other words, the SSA has taken four executive actions that obligate a substantial amount of new mandatory spending and taxpayer dollars to alleviate administrative burdens at an approximately 40:1 ratio.”

At a March Ways and Means hearing, Commissioner O’Malley testified that the agency’s rulemaking would comply with “the letter of the law.” However, the repeated failure of the Biden-Harris Administration to identify administrative offsets to pay for these rules violates the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act that saves taxpayer money by requiring the executive branch to pay for new spending for executive actions costing at least $1 billion over 10 years: 

“We have serious concerns about the way in which the SSA promulgated these regulations and whether the agency complied with Administrative PAYGO requirements included in the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) (P.L. 118-5). The FRA renewed a fiscal requirement that if the cost of a proposed rule exceeds $1 billion over 10 years or over $100 million in every year of such 10-year period in mandatory spending, the agency must propose to undertake one or more administrative actions that would reduce direct spending by more than or equal to the cost of the original proposed rule. In particular, two of these rules were finalized in mid-2024 thus avoiding the $100 million threshold for only one year out of the required 10, one was granted a waiver, and the fourth was estimated by the SSA to be just short of the $1 billion spending threshold. In each case, the SSA avoided identifying any offset for the added cost that it imposed upon both taxpayers and other beneficiaries.”

Read the full letter here.