This week, Representative John Curtis (R-UT) introduced legislation to protect American taxpayers against poor data management practices within the federal government. The Stopping Payments to the Deceased Act would require the Social Security Administration (SSA) to share their death records with the Department of the Treasury in order to avoid improperly making payments to deceased persons in the future. He released the following statement:

“The American taxpayer should never be on the hook for clumsy federal decision making,” said Curtis. “We could have saved the American people more than $1 billion if we had done our homework. This common-sense legislation gives our federal agencies the requisite tools to sync their data systems on the front-end versus scrambling for solutions to avoidable problems on the back-end.”

Background

In March 2020, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Response, and Economic Recovery Act (CARES Act), which authorized Economic Impact Payments to American households. This included over a million payments to deceased individuals, totally to a whopping $1.5 billion, according to a recent report published by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the preeminent government watchdog agency. The investigation uncovered inconsistencies in how federal agencies share data with each other that led to this oversight.

Specifically, GAO cited the Department of the Treasury’s lack of access to SSA’s ‘Death Master File’ as a reason why the Treasury made these payments. The report ultimately determined that Congressional action is required in order to give SSA the authority to share these records with the Department of the Treasury, which is why Rep. Curtis took action to correct the problem.

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