On April 13, 2018 the president signed H.R. 4547, the Strengthening Protections for Social Security Beneficiaries Act of 2018. This bipartisan legislation provides needed improvements to the representative payee program to better protect those who are unable to manage their Social Security benefits on their own.
For over two years, the Social Security Advisory Board (board) committed itself to exploring how to strengthen the representative payee program, which serves more than eight million vulnerable beneficiaries/recipients. In January 2018, the board released its final report, which provided short-term recommendations to Social Security and Congress and advocated for the Office of Management and Budget to pursue long-term cross-agency coordination and reforms.
This new law will address many of the concerns that the board has raised over several years, including how Social Security determines financial capability, selects a representative payee and monitors the program.
More information about the board’s report and prior work on representative payee issues may be found here.
