What better day than Halloween to hear this news?
The federal government has paid out more than $1 billion in checks to dead people over a decade, according to a new report by the top Republican on the Senate’s investigative panel.
All told, the government has paid out funds to some 250,000 dead people, said Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on investigations.
“Washington paid for dead people’s prescriptions and wheelchairs, subsidized their farms, helped pay their rent, and even chipped in for their heating and air conditioning bills,” Mr. Coburn’s report said.
Among the payments to dead people were $18 million in stimulus funds from Social Security, $92 million in Medicare claims paid for treatments prescribed by dead doctors and $8.2 million for medical supplies prescribed for dead patients.
But sure, let’s keep expanding the federal government.
My Mom continued to receive SS checks for years after she passed away. I tried repeatedly to get them to stop. No dice. After 6 years they came at me wanting 35K. Why? Because, while for the rest of the world, money is gone when the check is cashed. Not the feds. When the check is issued they count that as money gone – forever. Never mind whether the check has been cashed. As far as they were concerned, I had 35K even though the checks were being used for bookmarks.
And…………checks that are returned without being defaced are very often cashed by the office staff. Yep! Since the Secret Service oversees the Treasury, I ended up on first name basis with quite a few of them during the little debacle, and they told me that little factoid. FWIW – the Secret Service HATES the IRS.
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