The New York Post is running an article in which Senator Joni Ernst criticizes Social Security for making payments to dead people. The tone of the article suggests there's some awful scandal going on. However, it doesn't give the entire context showing that payments to dead people are a tiny portion of benefits paid and that Social Security makes extensive efforts to prevent the overpayments. Social Security's efforts to identify dead beneficiaries are so successful that the agency's Death Master File is widely used in the financial industry to prevent fraud. They use it because they can't do better. Most notably the article includes no suggestion on how the agency could do a better job of identifying dead people.
I sometimes think that if Republican leaders had their way the Social Security Administration would spend as much money trying to find fraud as it does to make benefit payments. Why are they so obsessed with fraud? Because they hate the very existence of Social Security and want proof that it's fatally flawed.
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They‘re also obsessed with fraud because their dumb voters are. Republicans love to complain about how unfair it is that they have to pay taxes. Then they insist any social programs be means tested to ensure only the poorest of the poor benefit. Then they turn around and complain that their money is being spent ln poor people and fraudsters, and not on them. It’s an endless feedback loop of idiocy and perceived victimhood that defines the party.
Senator Joni Ernst has an affection for the afterlife.
Ernst posted a video to her Instagram story Saturday where she spoke directly to camera, apparently from a cemetery.
"Hello everyone. I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize for a statement that I made yesterday at my town hall," she began, before describing the incident.
"I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth," she said. "So I apologize. And I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well.
But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ," she added.
I don't know how the Senator expects SSA to go around and check if someone buried their mom in the backyard. If she truly wants this, she should massively increase SSA's administrative budget. But I would guess that an enormous percentage of SSA payments to dead people are ones where the person died mid-month and by law wasn't eligible for the payment. Those are almost always recouped in the next couple months. Congress could very easily reduce those improper payments if they changed the law to make people eligible for benefits in the month of death. I think that would also tremendously increase customer satisfaction with SSA--people hate when their loved one dies on the 28th of the month and their whole check gets clawed back, right when there are funeral expenses.
Why are you so against finding and eliminating fraud?
Paying even one dead person fraudulent money is one too many. I applaud these efforts.
Because they are always projecting! They are frauds and therefore expect everything and everyone to be as morally and ethically bankrupt as they are.
Leland checking in…
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