The Federalist Papers – by Robert Gehl
The Social Security Administration managed to pay out $1 million in benefits to individuals who do not have a Social Security Number, meaning it should be impossible for them to get benefits.
A new audit from the inspector general found massive errors in the government’s documentation for “representative payees,” a term that means people who receive payments on behalf of someone else who is incapable of managing their own affairs.
There are thousands of cases where the recipients received the fund and there is no SSN on file.
Over the last ten years, the agency paid $1 billion to 22,426 “representative payees” who ‘did not have an SSN, and SSA ad not followed its policy to retain the paper application,” the Washington Free Beacon reports.
“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.
In addition, the IG found that the agency paid $853.1 million in benefits since 2004 to individuals who had been officially terminated as “representative payees” by the agency.
The errors occurred because the agency did not keep up with the 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.
Social Security benefits are also going to illegal aliens through the system. A full 17 percent of “representative payees” in the sample did not have an SSN because they were illegal aliens. The only time illegal aliens are allowed to receive SSN payments are on behalf of 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 non-citizens and persons without an SSN.
“Representative payees play a significant role in many beneficiaries’ lives,” the SSA said in response. “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.”
“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 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.
But none of these excuses justified the audit’s findings: people are getting Social Security money who should not be.
And that’s a crime. Isn’t it?
“But none of these excuses justified the audit’s findings: people are getting Social Security money who should not be.
And that’s a crime. Isn’t it?”
So is being here illegally, but apparently that doesn’t matter. If they weren’t here to begin with, they wouldn’t be able to collect, would they?