Every senior citizens' nightmare, and if the DOGE bros have theire way, I expect will hear more stories like this:

Johnson is 82 and still kicking. Yet sometime last month, someone or something led Social Security to both tag him as dead and start clawing back his benefits.

Johnson's strange trip through the netherworld began in February, when a letter from his bank arrived addressed to his wife, Pam.

"We recently received notification of LEONARD A. JOHNSON's passing," it began. "We offer our sincerest condolences ... "

At first she figured it was a scam--her husband, after all, was sitting right there. But then the bank got to the point.

"We know this is a difficult time, and we're here to help," the bank wrote. "We received a request from Social Security Administration to return benefits paid to LEONARD A. JOHNSON's account after their passing."

"There's nothing you need to do--we've deducted the funds from LEONARD A. JOHNSON's account."

Uh oh. It itemized how $5,201 had been stricken from their bank account, on the grounds that Ned wasn't justified to get those benefits--because he was dead. That was for payments he'd received in December and January.

Ned found that his February Social Security check hadn't been paid, and he's yet to receive his March check, either. His Medicare insurance had been canceled. . . .

What followed was a nearly three-week battle to resurrect himself. He called Social Security two or three times a day for two weeks, with each call put on hold and then eventually disconnected. Finally someone answered and gave him an appointment for March 13. Then he got a call delaying that to March 24.

In a huff, he went to the office on the ninth floor of the Henry Jackson Federal Building downtown. It's one of the buildings proposed to be closed under what the AP called "a frenetic and error-riddled push by Elon Musk's budget-cutting advisers."