Warner sponsors bill to permanently stop government payments to dead Americans

The Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act would save billions of federal dollars by curbing erroneous payments to individuals who have died.

The legislation, sponsored by U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, John Kennedy of Louisiana and Gary Peters of Michigan would make permanent the provisions from the Stopping Improper Payments to Deceased People Act.

The law was previously sponsored by Warner, Kennedy and Peters to stop unlawful payments to the deceased by allowing the Social Security Administration to share the Death Master File, which is a record of deceased individuals, with the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay system, for a period of three years.

The Treasury Department announced last month that $31 million in fraud and improper payments was recovered during the first five months of the bill’s implementation. The new bill would make the temporary provisions permanent, reining in the government’s ability to make improper payments to the deceased in the future.

“Despite the antics we’ve seen from Elon Musk in recent weeks, there are real, serious ways to improve government efficiency. And where issues are actually identified, Congress should step in and act. That’s the right way to actually stop waste, fraud and abuse of government resources – not with chaotic firings and illegal spending cuts. I look forward to working with my colleagues to get this commonsense measure passed into law,” Warner said.

The bill would also allow Treasury’s Do Not Pay working system to compare death information from the Social Security Administration with personal information from other federal entities and to share the information with any paying or administering agency that is authorized to use the Do Not Pay system.

A former business executive, Warner has a record of working in Congress to improve government efficiency, accountability and transparency. The DATA Act, which required the government to standardize federal spending data and post it on a single website so Americans can track how their tax dollars are being spent, established usaspending.gov. The legislation was hailed as the single most significant open-government initiative since the Freedom of Information Act of 1966. Warner also passed into law the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act, which requires federal agencies to report results quarterly on their highest priority programs, and to designate a performance improvement officer for each agency.