Ending Improper Payments to Deceased Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am announcing my intention to object to any unanimous consent request to proceed to S. 2492, the Ending Improper Payments to Deceased Act.

I support my colleagues' efforts to identify opportunities to reduce Federal improper payments by indefinitely extending the cooperative data exchange agreement between the Social Security Administration and the Department of the Treasury's Do Not Pay (DNP) working system, as established by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 (P.L. No. 116-260). However, this bill rushes to make this data exchange permanent without evaluating the efficacy of the data exchange.

As my colleagues may know, the purpose of the 2021 law was to expand access to the State-owned death information to Federal Agencies for the purposes of reducing improper payments while ensuring Social Security Administration and States are fully reimbursed for the cost of creating, compiling, and maintain the data. To ensure those goals were achieved, we established a 3-year trial period so we could evaluate the performance, usefulness, and downstream effects of the exchange with DNP and to provide us the opportunity to determine the best path forward for Federal Agencies' access to State death data.

As required by law, the SSA-DNP exchange began operating on December 27, 2023, less than a year ago. In my conversations with the Treasury Department and the Social Security Administration, both Agencies acknowledged they do not have sufficient data to evaluate the efficacy of the data exchange, including whether SSA is fully reimbursed for the costs of collecting and maintaining the state death data. Without that information, it is difficult to determine whether this exchange is the best path forward for Federal Agencies' accessing State death data. For these reasons, I will object to any unanimous consent request in relation to this legislation.

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