Obama to agencies: Don't pay dead people

IT'S ABOUT TIME! WE'VE BEEN DOING IT FOR YEARS! WHAT ABOUT THE ILLEGALS WHO I THINK GET A GREEN CARD THEN GO BACK TO MEXICO AND WE, THE IDIOTS WE ARE, CONTINUE TO SEND THEM CHECKS TO THE TUNE OF OVER 20 BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR! CHECK IT OUT. I KNOW IT SOUNDS LIKE "BULL" BUT IT'S NOT! THEY LAUGH ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK! WE GIVE AND GIVE AND GIVE AND YOU AND I KEEP PAYING AND PAYING AND PAYING!!!

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.

Also planned for inclusion: contractors who've fallen behind in their payments or, even worse, landed in jail, and companies that have been suspended or otherwise deemed ineligible for government work.

"This stuff seems obvious on its face," Biden acknowledged. "The voters will go, 'My God, isn't that happening already?'"

In fact, the Social Security Administration does have what it calls a "Death Master File." But some other agencies don't routinely check it before issuing benefits. Ditto with the General Services Administration, which has an "Excluded Parties List System" for ineligible contractors.

An order signed by President Barack Obama on Friday would centralize the information from numerous sources.

The figures on payments to the deceased come courtesy of the White House Office of Management and Budget, which also says checks went to 14,000 convicted felons, both in jail and still on the lam. The three-year total there: $230 million.

With the federal debt mounting and red ink worries spreading in Europe, Obama is under increasing political pressure to cut spending sharply. Recently, he told federal agencies to come up with ways of trimming 5 percent from their budgets next year, and of saving billions in federal building costs.

Another cost-cutting measure announced Friday was an online fraud detection program for Medicare and Medicaid. OMB said those programs made $65 billion in erroneous payments last year.

The software, developed by officials charged with scrutinizing Obama's stimulus plan, was demonstrated for reporters by OMB Director Peter Orszag. A slide show portrayed auditors using it to discover that a number of contractors and subcontractors scheduled for payment by the government were in fact located in a single home. Plus, a satellite photo showed the home had a pool and a boat. "Suspicious," Orszag said.

The White House reckons improper payments of all kinds -- from outright fraud to checks to inmates to simply mistyped pay stubs -- totaled $110 billion in 2009.

"We think we have the tools now to take a real bite out of this," Biden said.

DO you have any idea how many of obamas kind will go ballistic,alot of them have been living off their dead kin since 1865.not being rude but its true.now about those votes from non existant people?,well i guess obama will just sue to get it his way,again.

» Full Story on finance.yahoo.com

Survey Finds,Obama Gets High Marks Abroad

Barack Hussein Obama (born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.

BERLIN — Struggling at home, President Obama has maintained much of his high popularity abroad after more than a year in office, a new global survey has found, receiving high marks for his handling of the economic crisis and the lowest for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

According to a survey of nearly 25,000 people in 22 countries published Thursday by the Pew Research Center, the popularity of the United States has risen most notably over the past year among respondents in Russia and China. Both countries are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and are essential to American efforts to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The United States continues to have the most difficulty improving its image in Muslim countries. In Egypt, where Mr. Obama gave a much-heralded address in Cairo in June 2009, only 17 percent of those surveyed said they had a favorable view of the United States, the lowest rating in the five years Egyptians had been polled. Last year, 27 percent of those polled said they had a favorable view.

Not only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have reined in some of the enthusiasm generated by Mr. Obama’s election in November 2008. Analysts said that enthusiasm was often based on expectations placed on a popular candidate that a president pursuing American interests would not be able to fulfill.

“People around the world are starting to realize that not everything is going to change under Obama,” said Johannes Thimm, an expert on American foreign policy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “But it’s remarkable that the general bounce back from the Bush administration in the negative standing of the United States has held up.”

“Now the big challenge is for Obama to meet the expectations that he’s created around the world,” Mr. Thimm said.

The Global Attitudes survey was conducted in April and early May both by telephone and through face-to-face interviews by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan organization in Washington. Interviews were conducted nationwide in each country except China, India and Pakistan, in which samples were disproportionately urban. Margins of sampling error ranged from plus or minus 3 to 5 percentage points.

Positive attitudes toward Mr. Obama himself remain overwhelmingly strong among America’s West European allies, according to the survey, with 90 percent of Germans, 87 percent of French and 84 percent of Britons expressing confidence in Mr. Obama to do the right thing in world affairs, compared with 65 percent of Americans surveyed.

Despite recent concerns about the euro in the midst of the European debt crisis, two-thirds of German and French people surveyed said they wanted to keep the euro, with 62 percent and 64 percent respectively saying they saw the European Union in a favorable light.

Among the more surprising results of the survey was the substantial improvement in Russian attitudes toward the United States. Of those surveyed, 57 percent said they had a favorable view of the United States, an increase of 13 percentage points over the previous year. Among Russians who say their country has an enemy, more than one-third, 35 percent, name the United States as its biggest enemy.

After sometimes difficult negotiations, Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia signed an arms-control treaty in Prague on April 8. The representative survey of 1,001 Russian adults was conducted between April 7 and May 1.

Among Chinese respondents, 58 percent said they had a favorable view of the United States, a number that has risen for three straight years from 34 percent in 2007. The more than 3,000 respondents in China were disproportionately urban, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

At a moment of economic stagnation and instability around the world, Chinese confidence and optimism stood out, with 91 percent of the mostly urban respondents saying they thought their national economy was in good shape, and 87 percent saying they were satisfied with national conditions. That compared to just 30 percent of respondents nationwide in the United States and 26 percent of respondents nationwide in France who said they were satisfied with national conditions.
It will be a long time before the rest of the world forgives America for George Bush.

In 2000, when Bush became president after losing by more than 500,000 votes the rest of the world was confused and lost their faith America.

When the American people re-elected Bush in 2004 the rest of the world was shocked and traumatized beyond belief....and they lost their faith in Americans.