In a big win for Americans who are sick and tired of seeing immoral fraudsters drain the American taxpayer and steal billions upon billions of dollars every year, a new bill that would toughen up the system and help ensure that payments don’t go to dead people, has passed in the national legislature. Sen. Kennedy (R-LA), who introduced the bill, celebrated in a video in which he explained why it is so important.
For reference, the bill is the Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act. In mid-January of 2026, it finally passed in both the House after having passed in the Senate, and headed to President Trump’s desk to sign. The bill ensures that all deceased people are recorded by the Social Security Administration in a “Death Master File” that gets updated in the Treasury Department’s “Do Not Pay” system, ensuring that the deceased are off the government payment rolls and can’t be used by living fraudsters to drain the government of tax dollars.
Sen. Kenneyd, commenting on the bill, noted that the reports of fraud in Minnesota are absolutely sickening and that he has been working to combat this sort of thing for years. He said, “Many Louisianians read the stories about the welfare fraud in Minnesota, and frankly, in other states, and it makes them nauseous. I feel the same way. That’s why I have been working for years, literally years, to target welfare fraud, especially the fraudsters who conduct fraud in the name of deceased Americans in 2023 alone.”
Noting that the Social Security Administration has done a terrible job with this and thus needs to be compelled by law to share the Death Master File, Sen. Kennedy then said, “For example, the federal government sent $1.3 billion. Not million, billion. The federal government sent $1.3 billion to dead people. It’s so pervasive that the Social Security Administration, which maintains a list of dead Americans known as the Death Master File. If someone dies, the state sends the name of the deceased person to the Social Security Administration, and that person’s name is listed on the, what’s called the Death Master File. We found that Social Security was not sharing this information, the people, the names of the folks, on the death master file with the rest of the federal government.”
Then, noting that further bureaucratic muddling meant he needed to introduce a new bill to deal with the problem, the senator explained, “One branch of government wasn’t talking to another branch of government. The Social Security Administration told me, when I confronted them about this and asked them, Why don’t you talk to your colleagues and other colleagues in the federal government? So we stopped paying dead people? Social Security told me it needed Congress’ permission to share this information with, for example, the Treasury Department, so it could include the list of dead Americans, and its Do Not Pay system. I didn’t argue with them. I said, ‘I’m just going to go pass a bill.'”
Then, after describing the years of effort it took to get the bill cutting off deceased people from welfare payments, Sen. Kennedy noted that it had finally been rammed through, saying, “This week, I’m pleased to say the House passed my bill, the ending improper payments to deceased people. Act. This bill had already passed the Senate, and now that it’s passed the House, it’s on its way to President Trump’s desk so he can sign it into law.”
Adding to that by noting how he is working to achieve further gains in the fight against welfare fraud, Sen. Kennedy said, “Now, dead people don’t need welfare. I think that’s obvious, but I’m not going to stop with just this bill. I’m going to continue to urge my colleagues in the Senate, my friends in the House, to pass another reconciliation bill, which we can do without Democratic votes, just like we did the One Big, Beautiful Bill to include the subject of welfare fraud.”
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Concluding, the senator said that he, like many Americans, views welfare fraud as utterly unconscionable and needing to be combatted, and so will keep cracking down until the problem is solved. He said, “Welfare fraud, it’s inexcusable. It’s unconscionable. These are taxpayer dollars, and I’m not going to stop till we get it done.”
Watch him here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video