Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Madam Speaker, information on the deceased is already shared among Federal agencies under existing law. This is really a trivial bill that is designed only to make it appear that Republicans are doing something about supposed fraud. An independent investigation found that the Social Security Administration has an incredible success rate with less than 1 percent of payments found to be improper, some of those being overpayments and some of those being underpayments.

Today, of course, is not the first time we have heard these claims about fraudulent Social Security payments to the dead. Indeed, from that very podium, Madam Speaker, we heard President Trump last March come to give a lengthy address to a joint session of this Congress. In his remarks that combined misinformation, outright lies, and a good many platitudes, the President devoted special attention to Social Security, ridiculing it with outlandish tales. He spoke of ``3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139, 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them.''

What nonsense. Thanks to the anti-fraud guardrails that are already available, that has not happened, and the President's representation was absolutely wrong.

While today's bill essentially duplicates existing efforts to prevent erroneous payments, the focus on improper payments to deceased people is just another part of the Republican plan to undermine public confidence in Social Security, a social insurance program that has been one of the most valuable initiatives ever approved in this Congress.

Yet Trump appointed Elon Musk, who proclaimed that Social Security is ``a Ponzi scheme.'' He gave him the authority to take a hatchet to the Social Security Administration. For months, DOGE, the department of government evisceration, promoted related lies.

Undermining the delivery of checks and quality service, the Trump regime, through DOGE, abruptly fired thousands of Social Security workers, and it continues to enact erratic policy changes. This comes on top of years of Republican opposition to adequately staffing the Social Security Administration.

Social Security has less staff today than it did a decade ago, despite the fact that it now serves many, many more Americans. As a result, at Social Security, under the Trump regime, there is a backlog of 6 million cases, public inquiries, along with an agency that is riddled with errors and delays from the shortage of adequate staffing.

Now, the plan from the Trump regime on Social Security is to cut in- person visits at offices around the country, which is just another effort to obstruct Americans from getting straight answers, not from a machine but from a person, concerning their hard-earned benefits. These are just more ways to cause Americans to question this vital Federal program so that nobody is surprised if, one day, the payments are late or the trust fund is insufficient.

We have had one current Member of the United States Senate, a Republican, who has declared that what we need to do, he insists, is to ``pull it up by the roots and get rid of it'' with reference to Social Security.

Providing modest retirement, disability, and retirement benefits to 69 million Americans, Social Security is what puts food in the fridge and keeps the lights on week after week.

For 22 million Americans, Social Security is the difference between living in poverty, and for 40 percent, it is more than one-half of their income.

It is a lifesaving, irreplaceable, social contract. As stewards of this hard-earned benefit, we must protect taxpayers' dollars, but empty promises to address supposed fraud are not the answer.

Americans deserve a restored watchdog and efficient program at Social Security that ensures swift and easy access to their payments.

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Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself another 5 minutes.

This bill is really another missed opportunity. The protections that are most urgently needed are not these new guardrails, but guardrails to protect our inalienable right to privacy.

Through the Privacy Act and other means, this Congress has long set limits on what the government can and cannot do with intimate details that it collects about each American. Government officials are not free to use our sensitive personal data however they wish, but that may actually be happening under the Trump regime.

When this legislation was before the Ways and Means Committee, I offered an amendment to address a serious and looming threat to our privacy. The Trump administration is pursuing an unprecedented effort to consolidate Federal data on virtually every American into a single, centralized master file, a de facto digital ID on every American.

This would be a digital record containing most anything that any part of the government knows about you, tracking where you live, where you work, your earnings, your bank account, your health insurance, your child support agreements, and more.

To understand the scope of this extraordinary project, my amendment required the administration to produce materials related to the Social Security Administration's role in data aggregation and its chosen contractor, Palantir, a company that one Silicon Valley executive once described as ``building the infrastructure of the police state.'' This project would further empower a President whose priorities include revenge, personal enrichment, and self-glorification to misuse this data.

Beyond the obvious danger of empowering a surveillance state or enabling the targeting of political opponents, the other danger associated with this mass centralization is that this sensitive information held by the Federal Government in one place could be exposed to hacking. One vulnerability, one malicious actor, one insider threat, and millions of Americans could be exposed.

A whistleblower has already revealed that the Social Security records of roughly 300 million Americans were uploaded into an unsecured cloud environment without adequate safeguards. Internal Federal reviews have identified serious weaknesses in Palantir's systems.

One internal U.S. Army memorandum described Palantir's platform as ``very high risk,'' warning that any unauthorized user, regardless of clearance, could access all the applications and datasets, the very kind of thing that would interfere with our privacy from private entities.

Palantir, of course, disputes these findings, but the concerns are real, and the consequences of getting it wrong would be enormous. My approach would not have stopped this project. It would not have dismantled anything. It simply would have required transparency, basic disclosure of how Social Security data has been used or misused by the Trump regime in the creation of this centralized database.

Yet, despite the gravity of these concerns, Republicans voted to block this reasonable inquiry from a regime that seems to thrive on secrecy.

This vote follows a troubling pattern that occurred right here in the House when rules were adopted to block a resolution of inquiry that I and other Members had to ask for this data from the administration.

Twice now, Republicans have adopted special rules, extraordinary measures that are designed to prevent the House from ever considering this question. Twice they have used the process to hide from the American people what is happening and to protect their Members from having to take a vote about this sweeping intrusion into our privacy.

Remarkably, Palantir has even said they are willing to support the resolution. That hasn't been enough for our Republican colleagues. This is the time for sunlight instead of fear of sunlight. It is unfortunate that this transparency, which should not be controversial, is not included in this bill.

I will be voting for this bill, as we did in committee, but it is relatively meaningless, and the big issues of the day are not being addressed in this legislation.

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Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Madam Speaker, I think it would be more accurate to say this bill is a tiny step, it is a trivial step, and it is curious how narrow the interest of our Republican colleagues are with regard to fraud.

Trump has been busy pardoning one fraudster after another. We haven't heard a peep from our Republican colleagues about that nor about his wrongful action within days of his inauguration of abruptly and unjustifiably firing the chief inspector general of the Social Security Administration. That is the public watchdog who is there to ensure that no fraud--dead, living, or otherwise--occurs. In only a single year, that inspector general had saved Social Security about $12.4 billion through audits and investigations.

House Republicans have similarly remained totally mute about the fact that as of today, almost a year later, Trump has continued his failure to nominate a replacement inspector general. They are apparently not too eager about addressing fraud to have a real watchdog there.

Just as they yell ``fraud'' as an excuse to replace ObamaCare with Republican nothing care, while Trump reinstates the suspended insurance brokers that were causing the fraud, the Trump regime and its congressional enablers are really just yelling ``fraud'' as a cover for the real agenda, which is to privatize Social Security.

Trump's Treasury Secretary, Mr. Bessent, recently blew their cover by indicating that the big, ugly bill about which Republicans have been so gleeful is really a ``back door'' to privatize Social Security, a step that will undermine the program that so many Americans are counting on.

This bill offers no additional protection to them or to the taxpayer. What it does do is continue the myth that Social Security is fraudulent, that it is not delivering the benefits that Americans have been able to rely on for generations, and with appropriate action will be able to rely upon for generations to come.

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Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

As stewards of Americans' hard-earned tax dollars, we have a responsibility to ensure efficient and appropriate government spending. The dollars that have been spent on Social Security have been spent well and effectively to benefit millions.

For years, I have sought action on several fraud prevention measures, efforts that have been repeatedly rejected, not even heard by the Republican majority.

Ignoring my legislation and other proposals that have been offered from the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, another inspector general that was fired by President Trump, Republicans instead offer this minor bill that does little to address fraud, that raises a myth concerning payments to the deceased, and perpetuates that myth that Social Security should be, in the words of one Republican Senator: pulled up by its roots and gotten rid of.

It is all fear-mongering from some of the same people who recently enacted a truly horrifying scheme with the largest cuts to healthcare and SNAP food assistance in the history of this country, all in order to further enrich some billionaire donors. These cuts leave millions of children, people with disabilities, and seniors without access to a doctor, struggling to afford their medications, and unable to receive in-home support.

The billionaire class was so greedy that even $1 trillion in cuts to healthcare wasn't enough to pay for everything that they demanded. The total receipt from Republicans' legislation means that trillions of dollars are being added to our national debt, even after these draconian cuts to healthcare. Those additions to the national debt will endanger the long-term promise of Social Security and Medicare.

This legislation does nothing to address Social Security's guarantee to American workers. If this Congress fails to act, the Federal Government will default in 2032, and people would see their Social Security payments cut.

Meanwhile, this bill also ignores the Trump regime's effort, which I discussed, about the development of a digital file on every American and the invasion of our privacy. It is good that this legislation requires the Treasury Department's Do Not Pay system to reimburse Social Security and State agencies for its use of death records that the States collect and provide to Social Security.

Social Security should not bear the price for that Do Not Pay system's use of the data. I certainly support that provision, but every American will bear the cost of Republicans' failure to protect their hard-earned benefits and private information from Trump's hatchet job on the Social Security Administration.

While I don't oppose the bill, I do oppose the misrepresentations that are made about it.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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