Over 1.1 million dead U.S. residents received a COVID -19 stimulus package by the Treasury Department according to a report Thursday published by an independent, nonpartisan congressional agency.
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The Government Accountability Office has conducted a review of the federal government response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which revealed that up to $1.4 billion in stimulus checks were mistakenly sent to dead people as of April 30.
In March U.S. Congress passed a massive $2 trillion stimulus package called the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, address to help workers and businesses amid the COVID-19 pandemic that has left millions of individuals unemployed and has forced thousands of employers to close their enterprises.
Among several provisions, the law includes direct payments of $1,200 to most American adults and aid to help small businesses pay workers.
In that context, President Donald Trump became news after it was known that his name would appear on the relief cheques to the individuals who did not provide banking details. Although critics accused the president of playing politics and using the financial aid to boost his reputation in an election year, Trump replied that people would be very happy to get a big, fat, beautiful cheque, and his name was on it.
Wow: Treasury sent $1.4 BILLION in coronavirus stimulus payments to a million dead people, congressional watchdog finds. By @ericawerner https://t.co/hQIgNnP4Fk
— Aaron C. Davis (@byaaroncdavis) June 25, 2020
According to the U.S. Accountability Office, the payments to dead people happened because the system used to send out the payments was based on that used during the Great Recession of 2008; was not synchronized between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the U.S. treasury, and did not use death records as a filter.
The report highlights that when asked about the incoherence of the payments, Treasury officials said that, to meet the CARES Act's mandate to deliver payments as "rapidly as possible," Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sent out the first three batches of payments using previous operational policies and procedures for stimulus payments "which did not include using [Social Security Administration] death records as a filter to halt payments to decedents."
When the first round of payments started to arrive, relatives of dead Americans all over the country said they received coronavirus relief payments from the on behalf of the loved one, and families initially believed they could keep the payments.
However, the IRS has said the financial support has to be returned as dead people do not qualify for the relief package.