Dead people could end up eligible for economic stimulus checks after all.

A little-noticed provision in Senate Republicans’ latest coronavirus relief package would partially overturn the Treasury Department’s much-publicized ban on sending stimulus money to the departed.

So long as someone died this year, they would be eligible for the $1,200 payments included in the plan. Not just that, Senate Republicans would also make them retroactively eligible for the previous round of stimulus checks.

Though they’ve comprised a tiny share of the stimulus payments, checks to the dead have taken on outsized importance this year. Critics have seized on the payments as evidence of government mismanagement, with President Donald Trump demanding the money be returned.

At the same time, the issue has been touchy. Many of the dead receiving the payments were among the more than 155,000 who’ve been killed by the coronavirus outbreak, and clawing back the money could make the government look callous.

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