OAN Staff Abril Elfi
11:29 AM – Friday, January 17, 2025
The United States Government has recovered over $31 million in Social Security payments that improperly went to dead people.
On Wednesday, an official stated that the recovery is “just the tip of the iceberg.”
According to a report by the Associated Press, the payments were recovered following a five-month pilot program after Congress gave the Department of Treasury temporary access to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) “Full Death Master File” for three years as part of the omnibus appropriations bill in 2021.
The Treasury stated that the SSA maintains the most comprehensive federal database of deceased individuals, containing over 142 million records dating back to 1899.
The Treasury projects that it will recover over $215 million from December 2023 until 2026.
“These results are just the tip of the iceberg,” the Treasury’s Fiscal Assistant Secretary David Lebryk said in a news release.
Lebryk has urged Congress to give the Treasury full access to the master file, stating that it would “significantly reduce fraud, improve program integrity, and better safeguard taxpayer dollars.”
The initiative highlights areas where the government is effectively combating fraud, waste, and abuse. Those were all key priorities in President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promises.
As part of his “Save America” agenda for a potential second term, the president-elect has appointed two prominent figures, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The department is meant to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programs and slash federal regulations.
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