The Social Security Administration sent about 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each to dead and incarcerated people — but almost half of them were returned, a new inspector-general’s report has found.
The agency was charged with distributing the one-time payments, worth about $13 billion in total, as part of the economic-stimulus package passed in February 2009. Most of the payments were made in May 2009.
The inspector general found that about 72,000 payments were sent by electronic-transfer and as checks to people who would have qualified to receive them — had they still been alive. The report said that of these payments, about 55,000 were sent because the recipients had died recently, and the Social Security Administration had not been informed of their deaths by states, families or funeral homes at the time the payments were sent. The remaining 17,000 of the mistaken payments were attributed to the SSA failing to properly process death records that it did have.
Another 17,000 payments went to recipients who were in prison at the time the payment was made in May 2009. […].
There’s a startling bright spot in the report: The inspector general estimates that about 41,000 of the payments were returned.
Remember: these government bureaucrats are the people in charge of your health care — and so ultimately, your very life.
And yet they can’t be trusted to disburse your money.
This has been a protein wisdom public service announcement.
It was an honest mistake. They sent the checks to the dead people who voted Democrat in the past several elections!
AS I mentioned at POWIP, in many large US cities dead people have been voting reliably for the Democrats in nearly every election cycle since the 30’s. They’ve simply decided to start using tax money to openly pay them for thier services.
TRANSPARENCY!
you’re discounting the multiplier effect, Bob
That’s true happyfeet. I guess they meant well…
But JG, all we need is a few good men. It’s like the Marines that way!
I never thought I’d say this, but I gotta side with the administrator on this one. They pulled off a distribution to over 50 million people, and did it with a 0.17% error rate, adjusted to 0.09% when the returned checks are taken into account. I’m not willing to turn my life over to the government, but if I were forced at threat of death to do so (not that that would EVER happen), I think I’d insist on these guys.
I’m a big fan of Senator Coburn, but I think he’s wasting his time here. The billions in pork (and the hundreds of billions in bad policy made possible by these intramural bribes), and further billions in payoffs to special interests, are far more damaging than $12 million lost in what appears to be a simple, honest, and — let’s be honest — quite small mistake in a quick-fire SSA distribution.
There you go with that “your” money thing again…
The problem is the quick-fire distribution itself.
The error rate is unacceptable because it isn’t their money they’re mis-forwarding.
But I do take your point, Squid.
Checks for the dead. Progress! Time was, it was just shoes.
That last comment has me scratching my head sdferr?
goog shoes for the dead Bob, all will be revealed.
Will do.
Firesign theater bit or the thriller novel?
firesign
Those folks were hilarious. We used to listen to thier albums back in the vinyl era. The detective bit was priceless
But everyone knew her as Nancy.