‘These taxpayer-funded benefits should be only for eligible taxpayers,’ said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
President Donald Trump was set to sign an executive order on April 15 directing that measures be taken to prevent Social Security from being obtained by illegal aliens, fraudsters, and other ineligible people, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“The memorandum will direct the administration to ensure ineligible aliens are not receiving funds from the Social Security Act programs,” she said during the daily press briefing. ”It will expand the Social Security Administration’s fraud prosecutor program to at least 50 U.S. Attorney offices, and it establishes a Medicare and Medicaid fraud prosecution program in 15 U.S. Attorney offices.”
The memorandum appears to respond to reports by the Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year that several Social Security recipients were found to be well over a century old, requiring that the inspector general of the Social Security Administration (SSA) investigate earnings reports for individuals over the age of 100. The inspector general will also be required to investigate instances of mismatched Social Security records to combat identity theft.
The SSA will be asked to consider resuming the implementation of civil monetary penalties on individuals found to have engaged in Social Security fraud.
Leavitt reiterated Trump’s commitment to protecting Social Security for tax-paying U.S. seniors and other citizens who continue to contribute to it.
“These taxpayer-funded benefits should be only for eligible taxpayers, and President Biden should think about what he did in his last term, which is allow tens of millions of illegal people into our country, many of whom were fraudulently receiving these benefits,” Leavitt said.
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Those individuals’ Social Security numbers were reclassified by the SSA into an Ineligible Master File to further ensure they can never access federal aid again.
The changing of bank information over the phone accounted for approximately 40 percent of direct deposit fraud, according to the SSA, with the Inspector General’s Office estimating that $33.5 million in benefits for nearly 21,000 beneficiaries was misdirected between January 2013 and May 2018.
The SSA has implemented the Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s Account Verification Service (AVS) to secure instant verification, but these two entities are not the only ones collaborating.
“Information sharing across agencies is essential to identify who is in our country, including violent criminals, determine what public safety and terror threats may exist so we can neutralize them, scrub these individuals from voter rolls, as well as identify what public benefits these aliens are using at the American taxpayer expense,” a DHS spokesperson told The Epoch Times.
Anne Johnson, Chase Smith, and Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
Original News Source Link – Epoch Times
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