Supreme Court to rule over Social Security to payback delinquent student loans

Hopefully the Supreme Court will see this for the egg-shell game that it is.

Basically the federal gov't wants to take money from one gov't account to pay off another gov't account. I wish our gov't would stop wasting its time and money trying to shift money around.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7630592/

Court to Hear Dispute Over Student Loans

By HOPE YEN
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:40 a.m. ET April 25, 2005WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider whether the federal government can seize a person's Social Security payments to pay off student loan debts that are at least a decade old.

Justices agreed to hear an appeal by James Lockhart, a disabled man who says he needs his monthly check to pay for food and medication. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the U.S. Department of Education, which wants to seize his Social Security checks.

The case hinges on a pair of congressional statutes that send mixed messages as to whether Social Security payments are shielded: the Debt Collection Act and the Higher Education Act, or HEA.

When Congress passed the HEA in 1991, it eliminated the 10-year time limit on the government's right to seek repayment on defaulted student loans by seizing payments to individuals.

However, the Debt Collection Act created an exception to that rule for Social Security payments. Congress eventually amended that law to allow the seizure of Social Security payments, but then left intact _ either inadvertently or not _ a separate provision that continued to set a 10-year time limit.

When the case is heard in the court's next term beginning in October, justices will decide what Congress ultimately intended when it made the series of revisions to the two laws.

Billions of dollars are at stake. There is nearly $7 billion in delinquent student loan debt, half of which is more than 10 years old, according to the Bush administration's Supreme Court filing. A 10-year time limit would substantially hinder government collection efforts, since most debtors don't receive Social Security until retirement age, it stated.

Lockhart's attorneys countered that a ruling for the government puts at risk the "ability of some of the most impoverished Americans to meet their daily needs" through their Social Security nest egg.

The case is Lockhart v. U.S., 04-881.

Ah, the old rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul economics again, huh?

Social Security is supposed to be untouchable. These people won't be happy until it's been completely dismantled. I'm so disgusted with the US government for so many reasons I'm suprised any of us can still breath with the stench of it all.