Tom Coburn (pictured) is a U.S. Senator from Oklahama. (We may become more familiar with him in days to come, given his membership on the Senate Judiciary Committee.) His online biography states that his Senate priorities include “reducing wasteful spending.” Earlier this week he issued a report entitled 100 Stimulus Projects: A Second Opinion, which “discloses 100 of the worst examples of waste in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or stimulus bill. The projects included in the report – worth $5.5 billion – range from Maine to California, and even two from the state of Oklahoma.” Senator Coburn offers detailed summaries of his top ten “most questionable stimulus projects,” including (at #9) the Social Security Administration’s mailing of 10,000 checks to dead people. If anything will stimulate the deceased, it just might be the whiff of free government money!
I Pay Dead People
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If the dead, we assume, can't cash the check, and constantly up-dating the database is more expensive than mailing the checks (possible, I'd guess, but I don't really know- I really doubt Coburn knows this either), isn't this just a bit of silly nonsense on his part, at best a distortion and at worse dishonest? Or, if the check ought, rightfully, be part of the estate of the dead person (because it consisted of money owed from before the person died, perhaps), shouldn't it be sent? Maybe there's something here, but I can't help but suspect that this is typical of this sort of crying, that is, mostly nonsense mixed with lies. At the least, I strongly suspect there's less here than Coburn would like us to think.
I agree with Matt!