Following Larson Warnings, House Votes to End Trump Meddling with Social Security Death Records

Washington, D.C. - Today, House Social Security Subcommittee Ranking Member John B. Larson (CT-01) released the following statement after House passage of S. 269, bipartisan legislation that allows the Department of Treasury's Do Not Pay system to use the Social Security Administration's (SSA) death records in order to help stop erroneous payments to deceased individuals. After today's passage, the bill goes to the President's desk to be signed into law.

Importantly, the bill contains a provision to prevent the Social Security Administration from meddling with death records to target residents. Last year, the Trump Administration was caughtusing the Social Security Death Master File to pressure thousands of immigrants with legal status to leave the country, effectively marking them as dead and cutting off their access to the financial system. At the time, Ranking Member Larson decried this abuse of powerand called on Congress to act. S. 269 adds explicit protections to the law to prohibit SSA from recording a death unless the individual is actually deceased.

"For months, I have sounded the alarm about threats to Americans' private data," said Larson. "It is not just external bad actors we have to fear. It is the Trump Administration itself. They are the ones responsible for wreaking havoc on people's lives by cutting off their access to financial systems and housing applications. I am glad to see Congress come together and end these attacks on residents' financial security to score anti-immigrant political points. We must keep speaking out against their abuses of power at Social Security. 'DOGE' still has access to the information of 300 million Americans, including names, addresses, and financial records that they moved to a vulnerable cloud! I have called for Republicans to act to protect your privacy and have been met with silence. When will they join us to protect their constituents from what could be the largest data breach in history?"

Ranking Member Larson has also introduced the Protecting Americans' Social Security Data Actto prevent political appointees and special government employees like 'DOGE' from accessing private records at Social Security. He demanded a hearing on the billin June when the Supreme Court allowed 'DOGE' access to sensitive data at Social Security. After a whistleblower report in August confirmed that 'DOGE' had copied the personal information of 300 million Americans on to a vulnerable cloud, Larson and Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Richard Neal called for immediate hearingson the report.