From a press release:
Today, House Social Security Subcommittee Ranking Member John B. Larson (CT-01) released the following statement after House passage of S. 269, bipartisan legislation that allows the Department of Treasury’s Do Not Pay system to use the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) death records in order to help stop erroneous payments to deceased individuals. After today’s passage, the bill goes to the President’s desk to be signed into law.
Importantly, the bill contains a provision to prevent the Social Security Administration from meddling with death records to target residents. Last year, the Trump Administration was caught using the Social Security Death Master File to pressure thousands of immigrants with legal status to leave the country, effectively marking them as dead and cutting off their access to the financial system. At the time, Ranking Member Larson decried this abuse of power and called on Congress to act. S. 269 adds explicit protections to the law to prohibit SSA from recording a death unless the individual is actually deceased. …
This bill should be called “let me justify our salary act” since it…
ReplyDeleteProhibits SSA from recording a death unless the individual is actually deceased.
Wondering when Congress is going to address the solvency issue at SSA? My money is on never since cuts will happen automatically unless Congress acts.
If SSA hadn't put people they knew were alive on the Death Master File to encourage them to self-deport, Congress would not have had to include that provision in the law. I am glad to see Congress agree that what SSA did was egregious and should never happen again. I only wish they'd had the foresight to include this sooner so SSA employees who listed living immigrants on the DMF could have faced criminal charges.
DeleteDon’t declare someone dead unless they’re actually dead. Bipartisanship!
ReplyDeleteIt's a start. Everyone who falsified SSA records needs to be prosecuted under the next administration. There has to be a deterrent to this lawless abuse.
ReplyDeleteThat would be Elon, "Big Balls," and the rest of the DOGE gang.
DeleteTo be forever known as Leland's Law
ReplyDelete