From a press release:
The U.S. Senate unanimously passed Sens. John Kennedy (R-La.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.)’s Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act, which would save hard-earned taxpayer money by curbing erroneous payments to individuals who have passed away. ...
The Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act would permanently amend the Social Security Act to allow the Social Security Administration to share the Death Master File—a record of deceased individuals—with the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay system. This change would rein in the government’s ability to make improper payments to deceased people in the future. ...
Are there some safeguards here? Doesn't this make it easier to cut off benefits to anyone the Trump Administration wishes? There are standards for the Death Master File. Are there any legal standards for the Treasury system? Maybe everyone voted for this because they halfway believed Elon Musk's lies about payments to deceased people. Who is actually going to be cut off benefits? Dead people or people the Trump Administration wants to punish without affording them due process?
5 comments:
If you read the bill, this is just extending something that already exists. And adding a provision that SSA actually has to think the identities shared are deceased - possibly inspired by the events of this spring.
Please speak up if I’m mistaken but if it’s recorded in the DMF what is the likelihood benefits are still being paid? I was under the impression that improper payments to those deceased were mostly due to delays in death reports reaching the DMF (not the fault of SSA) or the occasional burying of mom or dad so the adult kids can keep getting paid?
This enables Treasury to use the DMF for all payments, not just SSA’s. Which they have been able to for a year or two under a prior legislative pilot.
This feels like more of a Treasury thing than an SSA thing. SSA is already pretty good at not paying dead people. There's room for improvement but almost all of the improvements would have to come from increasing the speed and scope of reporting, or maybe leaning on FIs to better track account withdrawals so that the identity of whoever took money from the deceased's account can be provided to SSA/Treasury if the reclamation process fails. (The FI sometimes has this info, but not often). SSA OIG seems to be targeting fraud related to failure to report death a bit more often these days, too, but I don't have specific data to back that up. This exists, and large sums of money can be involved, but I want to stress that this is an extremely small % of total cases.
Senators once again passing legislation that makes no meaningful change. Nowadays, these votes are more proof of life to show the decripit assembly is still able to move bills.
However, this website is still able to insert the ubiquitously nefarious "orange man bad" reference. The TDS might need professional treatment.
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