Turns out the federal government has been writing checks to people who are, shall we say, no longer with us. As The American Tribune reported, Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano announced on July 21, 2026, that a shiny new payment verification system caught roughly $99 million in payments headed toward deceased individuals. Nothing says efficient government like needing a brand new system to figure out whether someone has a pulse before cutting them a check.
The Treasury Department revealed that they screened over 885 million payments totaling approximately $2.77 trillion through this verification process. Out of that ocean of cash, they flagged more than 4,900 payments worth about $99 million that were associated with payees who had shuffled off this mortal coil. Those payments got bounced back to the agencies that sent them for review before any money actually went out the door. Better late than never, right?
Bisignano popped onto CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" to do a little victory lap. He credited the vice president, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and the broader administration for the collaborative effort. Then he really laid it on thick praising President Donald Trump's leadership, calling the cross-agency partnership something that "never happened in any administration." According to Bisignano, Treasury is now the place where improper payments get stopped before they reach mailboxes of people who will absolutely never open them.
The commissioner also made clear that hunting down questionable payments is basically a forever job. He told the program host they plan to keep going after erroneous payments across SSA, Treasury, and the entire government, calling it a "lifelong journey." Which is honestly a pretty apt description when your opponent is an endless bureaucracy that somehow keeps losing track of who is alive.
Treasury Secretary Bessent offered his own glowing review of Bisignano, noting his decades of corporate leadership experience and praising his work modernizing operations at the IRS, where he also serves as CEO. Bessent said Bisignano has delivered better service to taxpayers while eliminating waste. A regular government efficiency superhero, apparently.
But the interview wasn't all high fives and fraud busting. Bisignano also took a moment to push back on a Wall Street Journal article that alleged he spied on colleagues during his time at JP Morgan. He dismissed the report as relying entirely on unnamed sources and called it "really bad journalism," insisting none of the claims were true. He suggested "political reasons" were behind the story and noted that the people mentioned in the piece remain close friends of his.
So to recap: the government discovered it was potentially paying nearly a hundred million dollars to people who are deceased, built a system to stop doing that, and is now celebrating. In fairness, recognizing a problem and fixing it does count as progress. But maybe, just maybe, the bar for what qualifies as a "major victory" could be set a tiny bit higher than "we stopped mailing money to the cemetery."
Read more American news stories at: The American Tribune
