IRS Sent $1.4 Billion in Stimulus Checks to Dead People

Millions received stimulus checks from beyond the grave according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

According to MarketWatch:

The Internal Revenue Service sent out 1.1 million stimulus checks to dead people totaling $1.4 billion, according to a new report from [the GAO].

As the IRS hurried to process direct payments to Americans reeling from the coronavirus outbreak, the GAO said the tax agency didn’t use Social Security death records to filter out payments to the deceased.

The watchdog agency noted Thursday it recommended a way for the IRS to avoid sending stimulus checks to dead people back in 2013, after some Great Recession-era stimulus checks went to the dead.

At that time, more than 71,500 dead Social Security recipients were paid a total $18 million of the $13 billion allotted for all Social Security recipients in the Obama-era stimulus package, according to the Social Security Administration’s Inspector General.

MarketWatch’s headline is “The IRS sent more than $1 billion in stimulus checks to dead people,” and it immediately reminded me of the old joke (or in many cases, accurate observation) about voter fraud that the dead only vote Democrat. And there is a tie-in to the debate over mail-in voting here.

If the IRS can’t be trusted to mail billions to people who meet the minimum threshold of “being alive,” why in the world would we trust them to mail ballots to people without error?

In addition to the deceased, illegal aliens could also receive ballots, especially in the states that bend over backwards to accommodate them. Government Accountability Institute Research Director Eric Eggers says it is “fair to assume” that many illegal aliens will receive mail-in ballots in California. “Basically, what you’ve got is this hodgepodge of a lack of oversight, lacks regulation, and confusion by the general public,” Eggers said. “And oh, by the way, there’s a global pandemic, so many people are focused on other things at the moment. And so … here come all the ballots, and yes, many of the people that will get the ballots will be legal voters, but many of those ballots will end up somewhere other than in the hands of legal [voters], and that’s exactly where the recipe for fraud can occur.”

This $1.4 billion in waste accounted for “only” 0.5% of total stimulus checks, by such a margin of error easily opens up the possibility of fraud altering the results of an election.