The
Inspector General at the Office of Personnel Management discovered $601 million
dollars that were paid to federal retirees in 2011, even though the retirees
actually had died during one of the prior five years.
“Every
day, we have hard choices to make on how to spend limited taxpayer dollars. Not
spending them on Social Security payments for people who have passed away is an
easy choice,” said Rep. Reid Ribble
(R-WI) Liberty Score 68%
More
recently, a government hearing last month exposed that 6.5 million individuals
with active social security numbers are older than 112-years-old.
A
“60 Minutes investigation” uncovered identity theft due to the erroneous
federal record keeping.
Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL) Liberty Score 14% said, “It’s unacceptable
that the federal government spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year in
improper payments to deceased people.”
A
group of bipartisan lawmakers introduced The Stopping Improper Payments to
Deceased People Act.
Officials
say the Social Security Administration holds the official federal database
listing deceased individuals, but that other agencies are not updated
frequently and that most inspector generals with other government agencies lack
access to the list, which leads to a number of federal agencies issuing
erroneous payments to dead people.
The
Act would give all appropriate federal agencies the right to access a complete
and current list of deceased individuals.
“Social
Security’s death records are in disarray. They show millions of people over 112
years of age as alive when they’re actually dead. They mistakenly mark tens of
thousands of living people each year as dead when they are alive,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) Liberty Score 67%
“By
cleaning up Social Security’s Death Master File and sharing it with other
federal agencies, we can protect taxpayers and ensure their money isn’t being
wasted fraudulently on the deceased.”
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Source:http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/04/24/how-to-cut-federal-spending-lawmakers-say-stop-paying-dead-people/
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