The Honorable Bernie Sanders
332 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator Sanders,
On behalf of the millions of members and supporters of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, I am writing to endorse your bill, the “Stop Social Security Garnishment Act of 2026”. Members of the National Committee come from all walks of life and every political persuasion. What unites them is their passion for protecting and strengthening Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the other programs that are so vitally important to older Americans.
As you know, since the inception of the Social Security program in 1935, the Social Security Act provided strong protections against loss of retirement income through the garnishment or attachment of Social Security benefits for the purpose of recovering debts owed by retirees. For decades the law provided near iron-clad protection against impoverishment in old age due to debt collection. Unfortunately, in 1996 Congress reversed course by authorizing the garnishment of Social Security and other earned benefits for the purpose of collecting debts owed by seniors to the federal government. This Offset Program with Treasury was suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic but later restored by the Trump Administration.
Your legislation, the “Stop Social Security Garnishment Act of 2026”, would reverse this decision and restore the historic protections that once were provided by Social Security against the spectacle of impoverishment in old age. Social Security benefits are already modest, averaging just over $2,000 per month for a retired worker. More than half of seniors receive over half of their income from Social Security, and it provides at least 90 percent of income for more than one-in-five seniors, leaving millions of older Americans struggling to afford the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs, food, housing and transportation.
According to your research, more than 1 in 3 Social Security recipients with student loans are reliant on their Social Security payments to get by. Half of Social Security beneficiaries that had a Social Security check garnished because of a defaulted student loan reported skipping a doctor’s visit or reported being unable to obtain a prescription they needed, due to cost. Most unfair of all, it is estimated that 1 in 5 Social Security beneficiaries may be eligible for loan forgiveness due to a disability, yet they have been unable to access the forgiveness they are entitled to. As a result, hundreds of thousands of older Americans are needlessly plunged into default on student loans that should already be forgiven.
Your bill provides the following needed protections:
- Prohibits the federal government from garnishing any Social Security payments, including Social Security Disability Insurance, from older adults and individuals with disabilities.
- Protects older adults against unnecessary forced collections.
- Ensures older adults retain access to their Social Security payments to access vital health care, medicine, and groceries without fear of having access to those basic needs disrupted due to a student loan in default.
We endorse your initiative to prevent the garnishment of modest earned Social Security benefits that can inflict a real hardship on older Americans who have few, if any, other resources to fall back on.
We thank you again for your long history of working on behalf of America’s seniors and look forward to working with you on this important legislation.
Sincerely,
Max Richtman
President and CEO