In 1989, federal investigators found nearly 6,000 monthly benefit checks being issued to dead people when they compared payments by the Defense and Labor departments, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the Railroad Retirement Board (RBB) with the government’s Death Master File (DMF).

Those Government Accountability Office (GAO) probers were almost certainly not surprised because Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General (IG) Richard Kusserow — one of President Ronald Reagan’s “junkyard dogs” — had been doing such Computer Database Matches (CDM) since 1981, finding hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid payments for deceased individuals.

Kusserow was the CDM trailblazer in the Reagan administration to screen federal benefit programs to ensure payments were going to living, eligible recipients. But in 1991, when the GAO published the results of its investigators’ work, few federal benefit programs were using CDMs, and hardly any state officials administering such programs were using the process.

Recognizing the immense value of CDM for saving tax dollars — to say nothing of the common-sense nature of it — the 1991 GAO report recommended Congress require state governments use their own death databases to screen payments, which Congress did two years later. The second recommendation was that the White House Office of Management and Budget require federal agencies to use the DMF and directed the Social Security Administration (SSA) to make the database available, which was accomplished with OMB Bulletin 92-04 a year later.

Problem solved, right?

No, not even close, as seen in a succession of subsequent GAO reports, beginning with a 1998 analysis that reported finding nearly 25,000 food stamp payments in the four biggest states — California, New York, Florida, and Texas — going to households listing deceased individuals as recipients in 1995 and 1996. Nearly $9 million in improperly paid benefits were involved. The report made multiple recommendations that were subsequently implemented.

But a closer reading of how those GAO recommendations were “implemented” provides insight into why eliminating federal benefit payments to dead people was still happening 15 years after IG Kusserow demonstrated the value of doing so and four years after GAO recommended measures needed to expand the CDM process government-wide.

Take this recommendation, as described by the GAO report: “Until Congress enacts legislation to enable SSA to disclose all information from its Death Master File to the states administering the Food Stamp Program, the Secretary of Agriculture should work with the Commissioner of Social Security to encourage the states to voluntarily allow such disclosures.”

And here’s how GAO reported they implemented the recommendation: “Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) and SSA officials have held a number of meetings aimed at using SSA death master file data to identify and remove ineligible individuals from the food stamp rolls. In its response to Congress on planned actions on the recommendation, FNS wrote that it is sending a letter to all the states to encourage them to use death records to remove deceased individuals from the food stamp rolls.”

Bureaucrats met, and bureaucrats sent letters, but little actually changed. It’s clear little changed because in 2013, GAO issued yet another report about the importance of all federal agencies and administering state officials using the DMF. But guess what, GAO found serious problems with how the DMF is sourced and assembled:

“Certain procedures that SSA uses for collecting, verifying, and maintaining death reports could result in erroneous or untimely death information. For example, SSA does not independently verify all reports before including them in its death records. In accordance with its policy, the agency only verifies death reports for Social Security beneficiaries in order to stop benefit payments, and then, verifies only those reports from sources it considers less accurate, such as other federal agencies. GAO identified instances where this approach led to inaccurate data. For example, GAO’s analysis of a sample of death records SSA erroneously included in its death data found that these errors may not have occurred if SSA had verified them. In other cases, when data provided do not match SSA’s records, SSA typically does not record these deaths.” (Emphasis added).

The GAO recommendations in the 2021 report met resistance within SSA, with only partial implementation as the result. “The SSA partially agreed with the recommendations to assess risk and share detailed reimbursement estimates, but did not agree to develop and publicize guidance, stating that each request is unique.” The result of such bureaucratic turf combat was that thousands of federal payments continued to go out to recipients who were no longer living.

Three years later, GAO took a look at the new “Do Not Pay” (DNP) system being piloted at the Treasury Department and that OMB was encouraging other federal agencies to employ in their efforts to prevent improper payments, including those going to deceased recipients. The GAO assessment was bleak:

“Although OMB collects certain information about the use of the DNP working system, it has not developed monitoring mechanisms, such as goals or performance measures. Reported savings from use of the DNP working system have been minimal. OMB reported that the overall DNP Initiative (which encompasses the DNP working system and other agency-specific efforts) prevented over $2 billion in improper payments in fiscal year 2014, but none of these savings resulted from use of the DNP working system.

“Further, while OMB has not reported on fiscal year 2015 results, the 24 Chief Financial Officers Act agencies reported about $680,000 in improper payments prevented through use of the system in fiscal year 2015. However, GAO identified instances in which such agency-reported information was not consistent with reports generated by the system. Without monitoring mechanisms and reliable data, OMB cannot effectively evaluate the DNP working system or identify and address performance issues.” (Emphases added.)

A likely translation of the GAO bureaucratese in the report might well be: OMB isn’t serious about making DNP a genuinely powerful tool against waste, fraud, and abuse.

So how do things stand today in 2026 in the effort to ensure every federal benefit program uses the DMF and other related management tools to block payments to deceased individuals? As The Washington Stand previously reported, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on July 27 that his department is now using the DMF in its screening of every payment made by federal programs.

“Together with Vice President Vance’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, this new safeguard addresses a longstanding vulnerability and helps ensure every dollar the federal government spends reaches its intended recipient. Treasury will continue efforts to modernize the federal payment system, strengthen safeguards against fraud and improper payments, and protect taxpayer dollars,” Bessent said.

“What made this new process possible was the passage of the Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act in February of this year. That measure was introduced by Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) and signed into law by President Trump. In addition, early in his second administration in the White House, Trump signed an executive order directing Treasury and other executive branch agencies to implement multiple new measures designed to stop improper and fraudulent payments of tax dollars across the entire federal government,” TWS reported.

It remains unclear if all federal programs dispatching benefit checks are now properly screening those payments with the DMF. But what does appear to be true today is that, after four-and-a-half decades of struggling to make that goal a reality at all departments and agencies, Trump and Bessent took the opposite approach by inserting the computer- matching screening process as the last step before a check hits the mailbox.

Hmmm, sounds like common sense!