Prisoners Got More Than $780 Million Payday Through American Rescue Plan
Sandy MaloneJuly 30, 2021
Washington, DC – Prisoners – including mass killers like the Boston Marathon bomber and the white supremacist who attacked a black Charleston church – got a payday to the tune of $783.5 million in stimulus money from the American Rescue Plan.
Conservative group American Crossroads filed a public records request for the information about how much money under had gone to incarcerated individuals under President Biden's initiative, FOX News reported.
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) records showed that stimulus money was given to 560,000 Americans who were incarcerated for all 12 months of 2020.
The records request by American Crossroads also revealed that Larry Nassar, the doctor convicted of abusing members of the U.S. gymnastics team, received a total of $2,000 from two separate stimulus checks, FOX News reported.
The American Rescue Plan that was passed by Congress in March gave $1,400 to individuals who earned less than $75,000 a year.
The $1,400 stimulus checks followed earlier $1,200 and $600 relief checks that were distributed under former President Donald Trump's administration.
The Trump administration attempted to block payments to people in prison when those first rounds of checks were sent out, but a federal judge stopped the withholding because he said the legislation granting the funds didn't exclude prisoners, FOX News reported.
Before the American Rescue Plan was passed, U.S. Senators Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) introduced an amendment to the bill that would have excluded prisoners.
Cotton pointed out that murdered like Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and white supremacist Dylan Roof would benefit under the Democrats' plan, FOX News reported.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Bomber, murdered three people and terrorized a city.
He'll be getting a $1,400 stimulus check as part of the Democrats' "COVID relief" bill.
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) March 6, 2021
U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said the proposal to exclude prisoners would harm minority families, FOX News reported.
"Given the stark racial disparities in our criminal justice system, this would cause the most harm to black and brown families and communities already harmed by mass incarceration," Durbin told his colleagues in the Senate chamber. "Children should not be forced to go hungry because a parent is incarcerated."
Cotton's amendment to exclude prisoners from the federal payday failed after a strict party-line vote where every Democrat in the U.S. Senate voted against withholding the funds from incarcerated individuals, FOX News reported.
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