Posted on 02/22/2017 3:31:53 AM PST by gattaca
The Social Security Administration paid $1 billion in benefits to individuals who did not have a Social Security Number (SSN), according to a new audit.
The agency’s inspector general found errors in the government’s documentation for representative payees, otherwise known as individuals who receive retirement or disability payments on behalf of another person who is incapable of managing the benefits themselves.
The audit released Friday found thousands of cases where there was no SSN on file.
Over the last decade, the agency paid $1 billion to 22,426 representative payees who "did not have an SSN, and SSA had not followed its policy to retain the paper application."
“Furthermore, unless it takes corrective action, we estimate SSA will pay about $182.5 million in benefits, annually, to representative payees who do not have an SSN or paper application supporting their selection,” the inspector general said.
The inspector general also found the agency paid $853.1 million in benefits since 2004 to individuals who had been terminated as representative payees by the agency.
The inspector general said the errors occurred because the agency did not keep paper applications supporting an individual’s case to receive benefits on behalf of another and did not update its system if their status was terminated.
Only six percent of representative payees had SSNs that were properly recorded, based on the audit’s sample of 100 beneficiaries.
Government benefits are also going to illegal aliens through the representative payee system. 17 percent of representative payees in the sample did not have an SSN recorded because they were undocumented noncitizens, the inspector general said.
Illegal aliens without SSNs are allowed to receive benefits from the government when acting as representatives for their minor children.
In response to the audit, the SSA said it switched to a new Electronic Representative Payee System last year, and transferring representative payee information “may have resulted in applications showing as terminated or not selected.”
The government defended the issuance of benefits to noncitizens and persons without an SSN.
“Representative payees play a significant role in many beneficiaries’ lives,” the SSA said. “We have approximately 5.7 million representative payees managing annual benefits for approximately 8 million beneficiaries. When appointing representative payees, we adhere to guidance in the Social Security Act (the Act).”
“Specific to this audit, the Act permits us to appoint, in certain circumstances, an undocumented alien, or applicant who resides outside the United States without a Social Security number (SSN) to serve as payee,” the agency said. “Specifically, the Act states we should verify a person’s SSN (or employer identification number) in our investigation of the payee applicant. However, the Act does not state that the applicant must have an SSN to serve as a payee.”
The “absence of an SSN is not a criterion preventing an individual from serving as payee,” the agency added.
If you are an officer in the military and a wrench goes missing, you pay for it. Why should a libtards buearaucrat be different.
Maybe they should. But you know the rules going in as an officer. I still remember the classes I had on hand receipts.
Bureaucrats should be held accountable for the rules they work under. Maybe we should change the rules, but holding them accountable for rules that were changed later would be wrong.
Ditto that King !
These stories make me so angry. A few billion missing from HRC’s state department, a billion in SSN payouts...pretty soon you are talking abut real money.
I’m guessing disabled anchor baby collecting benefits. Mamasita hit the jackpot.
Meanwhile, my cousin who is legitimately disabled through disease was turned down for SS disability twice, had to borrow from family members to hire an attorney to finally get his benefits. He should have changed his last name to something more foreign and save himself a lot of grief.
What is this?
A billion here and a billion there adds up to real money. Yet the Paul Ryan Congress, responsible for appropriations under the Constitution, can’t find any dollars to cut.
I suspect if ten people on this forum were given the task to balance the budget, and given the line item detail of the federal budget, within two weeks we could report a budget back with a surplus to start paying off the accumulated debt.
Trump needs to tell each of his cabinet department heads to submit a budget 20% lower than last year. Present it to Congress, demand passage, and live with it. Turn off the television so the whines of the liberal activists can’t be heard. One step to making America great again.
Abolish the whole illegal, unconstitutional Ponzi scheme and the whole problem (and others) disappears.
Amazing the solutions that would ‘appear’ should we return to our founding ideals.
Geesh this helps explain no COLA for real Americans on SS.
SSI is nothing but a pure federal welfare program. For anyone who hasn’t worked enough to qualify for real disability through Social Security, they sign them up for SSI.
And yes, since it’s a welfare program it comes straight out of the treasury.
So the feds paid out almost $1 billion in the last decade, or about $100 million per year. Last year Social Security paid out $998 billion in benefits. Not to make light of the matter, but if every government program had a .00001% fraud rate then I’d be pretty happy.
Yes. That’s exactly what these payments are. Or survivor benefits if dad was a citizen and died.
Until people admit that this is the fruit of our labor that has been forcibly confiscated from us, we will get no where on resolving the issue.
I keep hearing, but I am “owed” that money. No we really are not. We never voluntarily gave it.
Yep, that’s right....what I said. For people/children who don’t otherwise qualify for social security benefits. Pure welfare.
Yep, that’s right....what I said. For people/children who don’t otherwise qualify for social security benefits. Pure welfare.
Trump will stop this crap.
Does anyone on FR know where the immigrants being brought here from Syria, Somalia, the Sudan, and Iraq are getting paid from US Govt. as in what department. Is it Social Security? DHS or where.
And people wonder why SS is up-side-down, financially.
How many vets could see a freaking doctor for $1 billion?
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