Senators ask U.S.Treasury to stop garnishing tax refunds to pay for old debts

``Following a one-line change in the farm bill in 2008, the Treasury rewrote regulations to allow the government to take tax refunds from citizens who owe the government debts that are more than 10 years old. That change, the government says, gives it the right to collect on debts like the one created when Social Security overpaid someone in the Grice family in 1977. Social Security says it seeks to collect from surviving children in birth order, but Grice, the middle of five children, is the only one in her family to have had her refund taken.''