Audit Shows Previous Admin. Accounting Error, Sent $1B To Non-Citizens Across Country

Audit Shows Previous Admin. Accounting Error, Sent $1B To Non-Citizens Across Country
Posted by Allison Hillman | Feb 22, 2017 | Liberal Corruption

No social security number? No problem!
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has accomplished a lot in the last ten years. Unfortunately none of it had to do with properly documenting recipients of social security, costing the agency and in turn taxpayers, over 1 billion dollars.
Citing paperwork errors and lack of system updates as the cause for the massive error, the Inspector General who discovered the problem, says it needs to be fixed immediately.
“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 $1 billion was paid to 22,426 people who “did not have an SSN, and SSA had not followed its policy to retain the paper application.”
In addition, the IG found that the SSA has paid $853.1 million in benefits to “individuals who had been terminated as representative payees by the agency.” This indicates someone who has been collecting social security payments on behalf of someone after that representative had been removed as a representative.
The SSA defines a representative payee as “individuals who receive retirement or disability payments on behalf of another person who is incapable of managing the benefit themselves.”
Since the SSA did not record the representative payees’ social security numbers, it is possible that the SSA would be unable to detect the death or incarceration of the person. The audit found there were “no systems alerts when a representative payee’s SS number was not recorded…”
In a small sample of 100 beneficiaries, the IG found that only 6% of representative payees had correctly recorded social security numbers.
Of those 100 randomly selected individuals, 17% did not have an SS number because they were undocumented non-citizens. In other words, illegal immigrants.

A random sample reveals major problems with the system
In an odd loophole, illegal aliens without SS numbers are actually allowed to be representative payees for their minor children. Previously referred to as “anchor babies,” these children are automatically considered legal when born in the United States.
Despite this, it is disturbing that illegals are granted rights to these benefits on behalf of their children. This defies the process that needs to occur to prevent illegals from receiving benefits at all.
The SSA issued feeble excuses for the billions that were paid out from these errors.
The response from the SSA said they “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.”
In logic that can probably be contributed to being part of the Obama administration for so long, the SSA defended giving social security payments to illegal immigrants.
“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. 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.”
Clearly the SSA needs an audit not only of its accounting but also of its policies.

Social security is not the only benefit being manipulated
The agency concluded that the “absence of an SSN is not a criterion preventing an individual from serving as payee.”
In true liberal fashion, when all else fails, resort to childish accusations; “Further, we note that the audit did not find any of the payees incapable of managing benefits.”
The Inspector General’s report made several suggestions on how the SSA can improve their record keeping.

1. Take appropriate action for the 77 beneficiaries whose representative payees’ SSNs are not on record.
   
2. Evaluate the results of its actions for the 77 beneficiaries and determine whether it should review the remaining population of 224,164 beneficiaries we identified.
   
3. Improve controls to ensure (a) it records representative payees’ SSN and (b) its systems generate alerts when there is a discrepancy between representative payee information.
   

The recommendations are based mostly on improving the observed problems. However it will become important that the whole system is addressed as President Trump begins cleaning up the immigrant problems.
Besides the plans to halt the influx of illegal immigrants and deport the ones that are here, the Trump administration needs to confront the existing systems’ deficiencies. Obama allowed a broken system to continue for so long that it will not be an easy task to undo his mistakes.
American citizens should absolutely not be forced to support illegal aliens. So many people are struggling to live on the meager social security payments they receive. We cannot afford for billions to be paid to people who did not work all their lives and pay into social security.
President Trump has finally focused on an “America First” agenda. Given this recent report from the Social Security Administration, it is obviously long overdue.
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