Franklin Roosevelt should be rolling over in his grave. The program that the former president helped start to provide benefits to those in need received a black eye this week when it was revealed that some beneficiaries are still receiving payments despite the Social Security Administration's full knowledge of their death.

Payments of Social Security benefits to children, spouses, and parents, known as auxiliary beneficiaries, of the deceased are supposed to end when they die. But the Social Security Administration (SSA) paid out about $31 million in benefits after the death of these beneficiaries, according to a report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG).

The report comes on the heels of word from the Congressional Budget Office that the federal government will need to spend $9 billion from the Social Security surplus this year to make ends meet.

The OIG used a sample of 200 beneficiaries that were receiving benefits despite having a date of death in the SSA computers. The review found that 16.5 percent or 33 of the people were deceased and 27 of those received more than $1.07 million from their death to December 2000. Benefits were paid to some almost 13 years after the beneficiary died.

The Death Alert, Control, and Update System (DACUS) is supposed to check death information the agency gathers against its benefit records. If a SSA employee logs the death of a beneficiary in DACUS he still must also put it in the general Social Security records. Otherwise, the deceased will continue to receive benefits.

If DACUS does catch a discrepancy then an alert is sent to a field office and followed by a monthly alert until the initial alert has been handled. DACUS also creates a monthly list of death alerts over 120 days old. The March 1999 list had 546 death alerts for people receiving benefits.

No uniform regulation exists for reviewing the 120-day-old list so some regional offices overlook it. Payments of $782,099 to 206 deceased beneficiaries could have been avoided if the alerts had been handled within 30 days.

Investigators also found evidence that some people are receiving benefits even though SSA computers have records of their death. Despite government computers saying they are dead, 82.5 percent of the people in the cases reviewed by the OIG were alive and kicking and receiving benefits. One woman reported being contacted three times by the agency to confirm that she was alive.

Social Security's future may be uncertain in the long term, but one of the necessary steps to keep the program afloat is to make sure people receiving benefits are the ones that should be. The reputation of Social Security faces a grim future if such gross waste of tax dollars continues.

MORE INFORMATION: OIG: Old-Age, Survivors and DIsability Insurance Benefits Paid to Deceased Auxiliary Beneficiaries (O ld-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance Benefits Paid to Deceased Auxiliary Beneficiaries)