Social Security Administration

A Republican proposal to issue certificates guaranteeing Social Security benefits would cost the fund millions of dollars that could be better spent, the head of the Social Security Administration said. Because of privatization proposals and concerns over the long-term viability of the federal retirement system, House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas and other House Republicans want the government to issue certificates assuring recipients that benefits will not be cut.

In a barely audible voice, a 73-year-old woman admitted in court that, month after month for 31 years, she forged her dead father's signature on his Social Security checks. Ann Craig of Newark was caught in a routine check by the Social Security Administration. In all, she had illegally cashed 372 checks worth $151,000. Craig pleaded guilty to one count of fraudulently securing Social Security benefits. She faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Shirley Sears Chater breezed through her confirmation hearing to head the troubled Social Security Administration, telling a Senate committee that "a distinct and disturbing lack of public confidence" in the system must be overcome. The failure of President Clinton's nominee to pay Social Security taxes for a part-time baby-sitter in the early 1970s was barely mentioned.

The Social Security Administration is in the process of rectifying a mistake that over nearly a quarter of a century cost up to 700,000 retirees more than $850 million in benefits. The losses were sustained by retirees who continued to work after they began collecting monthly benefits. Because of a computer coding error made in 1972, some weren't credited with post-retirement income when their benefits were calculated.

Social Security recipients can keep up with the latest changes in benefits and rules through a new electronic newsletter the government will offer starting March 1. E-mail subscribers will be able to customize information they receive in the free monthly updates from the Social Security Administration. A retiree can get news about benefits, including announcements of Social Security's annual cost-of-living raises, for example.

More than 170 people in the city of Orange did not receive their Social Security checks this month because the checks never arrived at the postal facility in Santa Ana, Social Security Administration officials said Thursday. The checks were mailed from the U.S. Treasury Department's distribution center in Philadelphia on time and were expected to arrive at recipients' homes on May 3, according to Virgil Kocher, an official at the regional Social Security Office in San Francisco.

The Social Security Administration sought Wednesday to assure Congress and a growing chorus of critics that one of the most controversial elements of last year's landmark welfare reform bill has not denied benefits to severely disabled children.