Tens of Millions in tax money being paid to dead people

 

 

How would you like to give your tax money away to someone who wasn’t even alive. Sen. Dan Coates (R), of Indiana, said Wednesday that over $27 million has been paid out to dead people by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.

Coates brought up the issue in his weekly “Waste of the Week” speech. He got the figures from a Government Accountability Office study.

“What’s most disturbing is that GAO found that most of these recipients had been dead for two or more years,” said Coats. “And this is just one department in the federal government. It is simply inexcusable that these payments are going to dead people, and taxpayers should be outraged.”

Coates said the problem is that the Master Death File, which is maintained by the Social Security Administration to make sure they don’t pay out to dead people, is either not being updated or is not being checked by the USDA.

The Master Death File is updated using information from hospitals, families, state governments and other sources to keep track of people who have passed away.

“Now there are two ways this could have happened,” said Coats. “One, names of dead people are not in the Master Death File, or two, the USDA did not check this list before it sent the checks. Either way, someone dropped the ball.”

Coats said the Master Death File needs to be fully updated, which should be simple in today’s digital age, given all the technological resources we have available. The senator also said that the Social Security Administration needs to do what it is statutorily required to do and provide the list to agencies issuing the payments so they can verify that beneficiaries are alive before any checks are sent.