$22 million in stimulus money sent to dead or incarcerated people.

According to an inspector-general's report, the Social Security Administration sent about 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each, around $22.3 million, to dead and incarcerated people. The payments were part of a $13 billion dollar handout, itself part of the Obama administration's economic stimulus package passed in February 2009.

About 72,000 payments were sent by electronic-transfer and checks to dead and incarcerated individuals. While about 55,000 of those were sent because the recipients had died too recently to be entered into the system, another 17,000 of the mistaken payments were attributed to the SSA failing to properly process death records that it did have.

Yet another 17,000 payments went to recipients who were in prison at the time the payment was made in May 2009. While the bill was supposed to have a provision against payments to people in jail, the law included only a provision prohibiting payments to people incarcerated in the three months before the plan was passed, from November 2008 through January 2009.

While 41,000 of the payments have been returned, the remainder, totaling $12 million has not. The stimulus package did not include a provision allowing it to retrieve mistakenly distributed funds. Any money transferred electronically is likely sitting in the accounts of dead people. Your tax dollars... asleep at the wheel.