(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) released the following statement regarding a new report from the Social Security Administration (SSA) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) that found that SSA failed to properly record the deaths of 1.2 million deceased beneficiaries on the Death Master File, which is exclusively maintained by the agency.[1]

“It is inexcusable the federal government can’t determine whether a recipient of federal taxpayer money is alive or dead.  The importance of the Death Master File cannot be overstated.  

Failing to maintain this file costs taxpayers at least $120 million
every year.  Those are dollars we borrow here and overseas to pay dead
people.  That is embarrassing, especially when SSA is overseeing
retirement and disability programs that are going bankrupt.  Congress needs to hold SSA accountable for their breathtaking incompetence,” Dr. Coburn said. 

The impact of SSA’s failure to properly record these deaths is widespread and results in millions of American tax dollars paid to dead people each year.  All federal agencies are currently required to check the DMF to ensure the individuals receiving benefits are alive.  In June 2010, President Obama directed that before the release of any federal funds all agencies were required to check the DMF.[2]  SSA’s failure to maintain an accurate DMF also creates difficulties for the administration’s current effort to develop a “Do Not Pay solution” in response to the President’s directive, which includes all agencies checking a database of information from the DMF before a payment is made to an individual.[3]

The OIG report identified the following specific agencies that provide benefits directly to individuals by relying on the DMF:  Railroad Retirement Board; Department of Defense; Office of Personal Management; Department of Veterans Affairs; and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Therefore, SSA’s failure to properly maintain information on whether an individual is alive or dead touches every payment made by the government.  Past examples of government payments made to dead people include:

•    The Department of Agriculture sent $1.1 billion in farming subsidies to deceased farmers;

•    Medicare paid $92 million in claims for medical supplies prescribed by dead doctors and $8.2 million for medical supplies prescribed for dead patients; and

•    The Department of Health and Human Services sent 11,000 dead people $3.9 million in assistance to pay heating and cooling costs
.[4]

Further exacerbating the problem, SSA allows the Department of Commerce to sell the DMF not only to public entities, but also private companies.  Private entities, such as banks, hospitals, universities, and insurance companies, use the DMF to verify the identity of individuals and prevent fraud.  The same SSA OIG report determined that since 2001, 1,556 dead people earned wages totaling about $158 million.  While some of these could be errors, others potentially involved fraudsters using Social Security numbers of individuals that died up to 31 years ago.[5]

SSA OIG also found the failure to maintain the DMF produced inaccuracies in the E-verify program, which is used by employers to determine if a potential employee is authorized to work.  The audit determined that when an individual’s death is not recorded by SSA in the DMF, E-verify indicated the individual claiming the Social Security number is legally able to work.  As such, individuals who would otherwise be illegal to work can use Social Security numbers of dead people to appear to be legal to work.

In response to the report, Sen. Tom Coburn stated “The importance of the Death Master File cannot be overstated, especially in these bleak economic times with limited tax dollars to go around.  At the bare minimum, the federal government needs to stop sending payments to dead people.  If SSA cannot be trusted to properly and accurately maintain this important information, then Congress should determine if another agency can perform this basic function.”

Sen. Coburn previously called for SSA to improve its management of data on the deceased in October 2010, following the Internal Revenue Service sending $18 million in stimulus checks to 71,688 deceased individuals based on information in the DMF.[6]  In response, Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue responded:  “Absent a report of death, it is extremely expensive and may even be impossible to determine if a person is alive or dead particularly if the person died many years ago.”[7]

[1]   Social Security Administration, Office of Inspector General, Title II Deceased Beneficiaries Who Did Not Have Death Information on the Numident, Report A-09-11-21171 (July 9, 2012).
[2]   The White House, Office of the Secretary, Presidential Memorandum – Enhancing Payment Accuracy Through a “Do Not Pay List” (June 18, 2010),http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-memorandum-enhancing-payment-accuracy-through-a-do-not-pay-list.
[3]   Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies (April 12, 2012), http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2012/m-12-11.pdf.
[4]   Sen. Coburn previously reported that government agencies paid over $1 billion paid to dead people over a ten year period.  See Sen. Tom Coburn, Federal Programs to Die For:  American Tax Dollars Sent Six Feet Under (October 31, 2010), http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=406062be-b959-4798-b55e-39029197a9fc.
[5]   Social Security Administration, Office of Inspector General, Title II Deceased Beneficiaries Who Did Not Have Death Information on the Numident, Report A-09-11-21171 (July 9, 2012).
[6]   Sen. Tom Coburn, Federal Programs to Die For:  American Tax Dollars Sent Six Feet Under (October 31, 2010), http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=406062be-b959-4798-b55e-39029197a9fc.
[7]   August 14, 2009 Letter from Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue to Senator Tom Coburn.

WesternJournalism.com has published an article by Doug Brook, that information provided to congressional committees by ATF whistle-blowers and leaks within the Department of Justice prove Eric Holder to be either criminally complicit in the Fast and Furious scheme and cover-up, or the most incompetent, congenitally comatose Attorney General in the nation’s history. 

He asserts that though Holder is many things, he is not incompetent, at least not in the willful “execution-upon-command” of illegal and despicable enterprises; especially when those enterprises involve an Administration-generated murder in Oklahoma City of Kenneth Michael Trentadue while in custody of the FBI. 

“You need to know that Eric Holder…played a key role in covering up the torture-murder death of my brother, Kenneth Michael Trentadue.”

This is what Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue wrote in December of 2008 to prospective incoming chairman of the Senate Justice Committee, Patrick Leahy. The newly-elected Barack Obama had made Holder his choice for Attorney General, and Trentadue was going to do everything in his power to stop this shameful appointment going forward.

Kenneth Trentadue was killed in Oklahoma City on August 21st of 1995, four months after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building. He had been taken into custody by the FBI and placed in an isolation cell at a federal facility in El Reno, Oklahoma.
 
The official government report on the cause of death presented to Trentadue’s family stated that Kenneth hanged himself in his cell. But massive bruises and lacerations from head to toe compelled even the Oklahoma City medical examiner to state “very likely he was murdered.”
 
Using emails and handwritten notes acquired in a 1997 wrongful death lawsuit against the DOJ, Trentadue demonstrated quite conclusively in his correspondence to Patrick Leahy that then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder had engineered a scheme to sidetrack any investigation into his brother’s death in order to “…deflect congressional oversight and media attention…”

A fifteen-year investigation by Jesse Trentadue revealed that Eric Holder had covered up the murder of his brother in order to prevent congressional investigators linking the death, and eventually the Clinton Administration itself, to the Oklahoma City bombing. And Holder’s efforts to derail the Fast and Furious probe have made it clear that 20 years have not changed the Attorney General’s propensity for corruption and deceit. For from the aftermath of Oklahoma City to the smuggling of guns across the Mexican border, Eric Holder has callously concealed murders for which two administrations have been responsible.

It’s hardly surprising that Holder’s DOJ minions have decided to not prosecute the Attorney General for the comparatively minor offense of refusing to provide Congress with subpoenaed documents. After all, Eric Holder has gotten away with murder—or at least with being an accessory after the fact—for nearly 2 decades.
 
Of course, Republicans MIGHT decide to charge Eric Holder with his many crimes when the November victory of Mitt Romney places the Department of Justice in GOP hands.  The Party might also bring Barack Obama to justice, both for participation in Fast and Furious and his willful, duplicitous role as Manchurian Candidate.
 
Yes, they might. But then, Holder and Obama might CONFESS too! The one is just as likely as the other.    Click here for the posting on Western Journalism.