OBAMA ADDRESSED THE PROBLEM, BUT WINGNUTS STILL BLAME HIM FOR IT

The Wall Street Journal's blog has uncovered a shocking new scandal:

Maybe You Can Take It With You: Stimulus Checks Sent to the Dead

The Social Security Administration sent about 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each to dead and incarcerated people ... a new inspector-general's report has found.

The agency was charged with distributing the one-time payments, worth about $13 billion in total, as part of the economic-stimulus package passed in February 2009. Most of the payments were made in May 2009....

That's appalling! Typical liberals! Why didn't the Obama administration do something after all that money went out erroneously last year?

Oh yeah -- the administration did do something earlier this year:

The government sent benefit checks to 20,000 departed Americans over three years, totaling more than $180 million -- a remarkable number that provoked the Obama administration to create a government-wide "do not pay" list as part of its brainstorming for ways to save taxpayer money.

Once the database is up and running, agencies will have to search it before sending out payments. A pre-check check, so to speak.

"We're making sure that payments no longer go to the deceased — it sounds ridiculous even to say it," acknowledged Vice President Joe Biden in describing the database.

Funny how the Journal's blog neglected to mention that the admininistration has since tried to address the problem. And funny how the Journal's blog also failed to mention that the Obama administration found dead people receiving benefit checks over the past three years -- i.e., since before Obama became president.

So the problem didn't start in the current administration and the current administration is trying to stop it. Unsurprisingly, that isn't preventing A-list righty bloggers Erick Erickson and Jim Hoft from writing nearly identical posts hinting at political skulduggery (Erickson: "It has come to this: Democrats are not only getting the dead to vote, but paying them for their votes too"; Hoft: "Figures. Democrats Reward Another Voting Bloc -- Send Stimulus Checks to Dead People"). So Jim and Erick: in 2007 and 2008, when the Bushies were doing this, was that political skulduggery, too?