Congress has passed a bill that would stop payments from going to deceased people, said a celebrating Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA).
In a video posted on X, Kennedy explained that the Social Security Administration (SSA) “maintains a list of dead Americans” called the Death Master File. Kennedy added that the SSA had not shared “this information” with other branches in the government, and that after he was informed that the SSA would need Congress’s permission, he passed a bill called the Stopping Improper Payments to Deceased People Act.
Since the Stopping Improper Payments to Deceased People Act temporarily shared data, Kennedy went on to introduce a second bill, titled Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act, that would “make this data sharing arrangement permanent.”
“I have been working for years, literally years, to target welfare fraud — especially the fraudsters who conduct fraud in the name of deceased Americans,” Kennedy said. “In 2023 alone, for example, the federal government sent $1.3 billion — not million, billion. The federal government sent $1.3 billion to dead people.”
“It’s so pervasive that the Social Security Administration — which maintains a list of dead Americans, known as the Death Master File,” Kennedy added. “If someone dies, the state sends the name of the deceased person to the Social Security Administration, and that person’s name is listed on what’s called the Death Master File.”
Kennedy’s video continued in part:
We found that Social Security was not sharing this information — the names of the folks on the Death Master File, with the rest of the federal government. One branch of government wasn’t talking to another branch of government.
The Social Security Administration told me — when I confronted them about this, and I asked them, ‘Why don’t you talk to your colleagues and other colleagues in the federal government so we can stop paying dead people?’ Social Security told me it needed Congress’s permission to share this information with, for example, the Treasury Department — so it could include the list of dead Americans in its Do Not Pay system.
I didn’t argue with them, I said, ‘I’m just going to pass a bill.’ Well, a few years ago I did. I passed a bill called the Stopping Improper Payments to Deceased People Act. And, that bill allowed the Social Security Administration to temporarily share it’s Death Master File with the Department of Treasury.
I had to amend the bill … it’s a long story, and it was frustrating — to provide for a temporary share. They wanted to try it out first, well it worked. Duh. Since December of 2023, this bill has saved the federal government at least $330 million in improper payments. We’re no longer paying dead people, and having their friends, or relatives, or whomever cash the checks.
It was obvious that Congress needed to make this data sharing arrangement permanent, so I had to introduce — and was happy to do it, I introduced a second bill to do just that.
“This week, I’m pleased to say, the House passed my bill, the Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act,” Kennedy added. “This bill had already passed the Senate, and now that it’s passed the House, it’s on its way to President Trump’s desk so he can sign it into law.”
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