This statute explicitly removes any protection under section 407 that Social Security benefits may have had from offset, and thus allows the government to reach Lockhart’s benefit in order to collect on his debt. This amendment was inserted in the Debt Collection Act without removing the language already quoted about the nonapplicability of "this section" to claims outstanding for more than 10 years or to statutes explicitly prohibiting administrative offset. See 31 U.S.C. §§ 3716(e)(1)-(2).

A puzzle has been created by the codifiers. But it seems clear that in 1996, Congress explicitly authorized the offset of Social Security benefits, and that in the Higher Education Act of 1991, Congress had overridden the 10-year statute of limitations as applied to student loans. That the codifiers failed to note the impact of the 1991 repeal on section 3716(e) does not abrogate the repeal. Because the Debt Collection Act’s statute of limitation is inapplicable here, the government’s offset is not time-barred.