Your hard-earned tax dollars have been funding something absolutely outrageous for years.
The government knew about it but kept doing it anyway.
And Trump just signed John Kennedy's bill that stops taxpayer dollars from going to one disgusting place.
The Swamp Was Cutting Checks to Dead People
The federal government has been sending your money to dead people for decades, and Washington didn't care enough to stop it.
In 2023 alone, the bureaucrats sent $1.3 billion to deceased Americans—money that landed straight in fraudsters' pockets while the Swamp shrugged.
During COVID, Biden's people made it even worse by sending $3.6 billion in stimulus checks to corpses, with scammers quietly cashing them while Democrats rushed to hand out more of your money with zero accountability.
One con artist in California stole his dead mother's Social Security benefits for 30 years—$825,000 from 1995 to 2024—because nobody in Washington bothered to check if she was alive.
Social Security keeps a database tracking every American who dies, and Treasury runs a system designed to catch improper payments.
But the two weren't permanently connected, so checks kept flowing because that's how the Swamp operates—waste is the business model.
Trump Is Draining the Swamp One Scam at a Time
Senator John Kennedy has been fighting this fraud since 2019, but the Biden administration let it continue.
Kennedy passed a temporary solution in 2020 that forced Social Security to share death records with Treasury for three years, saving $330 million and recovering $31 million in fraud during just the first five months—proving the fix worked and the Swamp just refused to use it.
But Kennedy knew temporary fixes don't work in Washington where bureaucrats wait out reforms until nobody's watching.
He wrote the Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act to make the data-sharing permanent, and both chambers passed it unanimously because even Democrats couldn't defend cutting checks to dead people once the spotlight hit them.
Trump signed it into law this week with Kennedy standing beside him in the Oval Office, delivering on his promise to end the waste, fraud, and abuse that defines Washington.
Kennedy put it in terms everyone can understand: "Dead people don't need welfare."
This Is Decades of Swamp Corruption
Trump inherited a federal bureaucracy that treats fraud as standard operating procedure.
The Government Accountability Office estimates Washington loses between $233 billion and $521 billion every year to fraud—that's your money disappearing into a black hole of incompetence and corruption.
Since 2003, improper payments have totaled $2.8 trillion, and nobody got fired.
Biden's COVID response exposed the full scale—agencies reported $971 billion in improper payments from 2020 to 2023, a 59% jump from the previous four years, while California alone handed $10.4 billion to fraudsters in 2020.
State unemployment offices ignored federal requirements to cross-check fraud during COVID—40% just skipped the fraud detection steps entirely and kept writing checks.
This is the Swamp that Trump walked into in 2017, the same Swamp that fought him for four years, the Swamp that got four more years under Biden to perfect the grift.
Trump's back now, and he's systematically dismantling the fraud machine one bill at a time.
Kennedy's law forces every federal agency to check the Death Master File before sending payments.
Trump is dismantling the fraud machine Washington built, stopping fraudsters from robbing hardworking Americans while bureaucrats collect paychecks for doing nothing.
One signature at a time, Trump is proving the Swamp can be drained if you've got the guts to fight.
Sources:
- Ben Smith, "Trump Signs Kennedy Bill Ending Government Payments to Deceased Americans," RedState, February 12, 2026.
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, "Federal Government Made an Estimated $162 billion in Improper Payments Last Fiscal Year," GAO Blog, 2024.
- John Kennedy, "Kennedy, Peters champion bipartisan bill to end government payments to deceased Americans," U.S. Senate Press Release, January 2025.
- Office of the Inspector General, "Canadian National Sentenced in Nearly 30-year Social Security Benefit Fraud Scheme," SSA OIG, May 13, 2025.
- Fox News, "Treasury Department recoups $31 million in improper government payments to dead people," January 17, 2025.
- U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, December 11, 2024.
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, "Program Integrity: Agencies and Congress Can Take Actions to Better Manage Improper Payments and Fraud Risks," GAO-25-108172, March 11, 2025.
- Clay Higgins, "Higgins', Kennedy's Legislation to End Government Payments to Deceased People Signed into Law by President Trump," House Press Release, February 11, 2026.
