John Paul Stevens

“ Yet, as Congress foresaw, recoupment of other overpayments may entail much more serious difficulties for the statutory beneficiaries. The Secretary's "netting regulations" cover brief 2-month discrepancies, like the examples invented by the majority, but the regulations also authorize netting over multi-year periods, as was done with respect to the actual respondents in this case. The regulations may thus provide a form of rough justice in 97 percent of the netting cases, but that ratio in no way excuses the injustice that is apparent in true hardship cases. ”

“ Bowen, 853 F.2d 1532, 1537 (1988) . "While the provisions relating to underpayments mandate payment without qualification, the recovery of overpayment provisions are qualified by the waiver of recoupment procedures." Ibid. The reason for this distinction is easily surmised. A needy person who unknowingly receives an overpayment may spend it, not realizing that the Government will later take back money by reducing needed benefits, or by refusing to compensate for a prior underpayment. The beneficiary may be left without money essential to pay monthly bills. ”

“ Even this category encompasses overpayments not implicated by respondents' complaint, however. The present controversy affects only those cases in which the Secretary attempts to recoup an overpayment by netting it together with an underpayment, and in which the beneficiary seeks a waiver. We address, in short, the claims of a subset of the minority of overpaid beneficiaries who seek waivers. ”

“ Anticipating that there will inevitably be many occasions on which such a payment is more or less than the correct amount, Congress directed the Secretary to prescribe regulations outlining the procedure for remedying overpayments and underpayments.
In the vast majority of cases, these procedures are uncontroverted. We deal today only with a narrow category of disputed cases in which claimants assert rights designed to protect specially disadvantaged beneficiaries. Respondents, like the plaintiffs in Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U.S. 682, 99 S.Ct. ”

“ With respect to these beneficiaries, as in all other cases involving overpayments, Congress has given the Secretary explicit mandatory instructions. Those instructions require him to recognize that any case in which "more than the correct amount of payment has been made" involves a factual event that cannot be ignored. ”

“ This proposition depends, of course, upon the relative frequency of overpayments and underpayments. The majority assumes that the two occur with equal frequency, an assumption for which it offers no support. One might indeed make precisely the opposite assumption: that the Government errs in its own favor more often, and more substantially, than it errs in favor of beneficiaries.↑ See, e.g., 42 U.S.C. §§ 402 (a) , 402 (j) (1982 and Supp. V) ; 42 U.S.C. § 1382 (c) (1) (1982 ed., Supp. V) .↑ It is, of course, of no importance that Yamasaki predates Chevron U.S.A. Inc. ”