Governments pay welfare to
dead people
Watchdog – Dustin Hurst – 8/1/2013
The federal government
thinks it’s paying dead farmers, but can’t really say how many corpses might be
receiving cash due to the agency’s sloppy record keeping.
Tad DeHaven, a policy
analyst with the Cato Institute: “This
is what happens when you have a massive government cutting millions of checks
to people each month,” DeHaven said, decrying America’s ever-growing welfare
state.
To fix the problem,
governments could spend more money on verifying payments, DeHaven said, or
could go the fiscally sane route and cut welfare programs like crop subsidies. “Waste and abuse go with government programs
like fries and a Coke go with a burger,” DeHaven said.
More examples of governments
handing out taxpayer cash to the dead.
Bay State bodies
Massachusetts State Auditor
Suzanne Bump showed her state paid out welfare benefits to residents from six
to 27 months after they’d kicked the bucket, $2.3 million in improper payments
to the deceased; family members of the deceased stepped up to use the benefits.
Stimulate this, Social Security
While bookkeeping errors are
blamed for much of this, as DeHaven notes, these programs are ripe for abuse.
Nearly 50 years of improper payments
Texas-sized abuse
An audit of the state’s
welfare program reported 4,096 recipients were dead, using a deceased person’s
Social Security number, receiving duplicate benefits in Texas,
double-dipping by simultaneously receiving food stamps from Texas and another state or previously
disqualified from the program.
History repeats itself, even when bureaucrats promise
it won’t
Northwoods Patriots - Standing up for Faith, Family, Country - northwoodspatriotscomm@gmail.com
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment