Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blasted the congressional process after a measure he sponsored to ensure federal tax dollars stop going to people who have died hit a legislative snag.
In a tweet Monday, Paul said his bill is being “watered down” so that ending cash payments to dead people wouldn’t happen for three more years.
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“Recently, I passed a bill in the Senate to stop sending stimulus checks to dead people, immediately. Now I’m told bill is being watered down to stop paying dead people, but only in THREE years,” Paul tweeted. “This is exactly why 90 % of people (including me) disapprove of Congress.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) pointed out in August that the U.S. government was also sending coronavirus stimulus checks to people living in Norway.
“At least the dead people who received stimulus checks were Americans,” he wrote on Twitter.
NPR has more on the Norway Connection:
The IRS now acknowledges that its own error caused some citizens of other countries to mistakenly receive $1,200 coronavirus relief payments — and that the mistake is likely to happen again if more stimulus money goes out.
When reports of the mistake first surfaced, the U.S government placed the blame on those non-Americans, saying that many noncitizens erroneously received stimulus checks because they had filed incorrect tax returns that made them appear to be American.
But many non-Americans who received stimulus money do not file U.S. tax returns. One of them is Susanne Wigforss, a 78-year-old Swedish citizen who lives in Stockholm.
Wigforss was surprised in July to get a $1,200 check in the mail from the U.S. Treasury. It was followed by a letter from the White House signed by President Trump, addressed to “My Fellow American” and informing her that “your economic impact payment has arrived.”
“This is so wrong,” Wigforss said, “because I saw that a number of people were being evicted every month in Chicago, for instance, and I thought one of those families would have needed this stimulus check. Why should a Swedish citizen living abroad receive $1,200?”
“There’s no way I’m going to cash this money — it doesn’t belong to me,” she added. “But how much money is bleeding out from the Treasury Department because of these [misdirected] stimulus checks, I wonder?”
Yes, ma’am. We wonder too.
