GAO finds improper Social Security payments to tiny fraction of federal workers

The title of the Government Accountability Office's report is ominous: "Cases of Federal Employees . . . Who Fraudulently and/or Improperly Received SSA Benefits."

Congress had asked the GAO to look at this issue. As always, the nonpartisan GAO played it straight.

Nonetheless, the report's title feeds the perception, advanced with some frequency this year by conservative members of Congress and their think tank supporters, that Frankie and Flo Fed are overpaid and, now, cheaters to boot.

But one turn from the title page of the report, released at a Senate hearing Wednesday, quickly reveals that only 1,500 federal workers "may be improperly receiving payments" from Social Security Administration (SSA) disability programs.

Not many out of a current federal workforce of 2 million.

And even that comparison overstates the problem.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the investigations panel under the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, put the numbers in a more precise context.

"GAO matched a database of Social Security disability recipients against federal payroll databases covering about 4.5 million persons who worked for government agencies for varying periods of time from October 2006 to December 2008," he said as he opened the hearing.

Fifteen hundred out of 4.5 million "represents a very small percentage," he accurately noted, "only three-hundredths of 1 percent."

If only all rates of fraud or improper activities were so low.

Yet any improper activity is too much, particularly by federal workers who are trusted to safeguard tax dollars, not abuse them. And every penny of the $1.7 million that the GAO found in improper monthly payments to federal workers is too much.

In addition to federal employees, the GAO report also looked at commercial vehicle owners and commercial drivers who received disability payments. But given that Americans have a right to have confidence in the government workers they employ, and given the climate on the right slope of Capitol Hill, it's the payments to federal workers that stir the most interest.