Republicans are ripping into a provision in the American Rescue Plan that makes murderers, rapists, and other criminals eligible to receive hundreds of dollars in stimulus payments.
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton is among the group of conservatives that objected to those incarcerated, such as Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and South Carolina church shooter Dylann Roof, getting government checks.
Shortly after the Senate passed the relief bill over the weekend, Cotton slammed Democrats in a tweet.
“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 Democrat’s ‘COVID relief’ bill,” he tweeted.
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
The payments are part of a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that includes a third round of stimulus checks, unemployment benefits, child allowances, state aid, and money for vaccine distribution. Eligible people will be getting $1,400 checks, which includes anyone other than nonresident aliens, an estate, or trust as any “individual who is a dependent of another taxpayer for a taxable year.”
That means some people behind bars could be getting their checks before the end of March.
Sens. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, and Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, offered an amendment to block payments to inmates.
“Prisoners have all their living and medical expenses paid for by the taxpayer, they don’t pay taxes, they don’t contribute to the tax base, they can’t be unemployed,” Cassidy claimed. “Inmates are not economically impacted by COVID.”
His effort to keep the cash away from inmates failed on a party-line vote, 49-50, with Democratic Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin arguing that prisoners’ children could be affected by withholding funds.
“This amendment will cause harm to the families of incarcerated individuals, joint filers who would receive only half of the payment that the families are owed while the spouse is incarcerated,” Durbin said.
Since the Senate passage, Cotton has gone on the offensive.
He tweeted that Democrats were solely responsible for sending checks to inmates.
On March 6 at 10:12am, the Senate voted on an amendment to exclude prisoners—like the Boston Bomber—from getting stimulus checks.
Every Democrat voted to send checks to prisoners, and every Republican voted to stop prisoners from getting checks.
Here's the vote: pic.twitter.com/3q5Bw1z0um
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) March 8, 2021
During an appearance on Fox News, he slammed the spending and lamented about “crazy” Democratic ideas that made their way into the relief package. What he left out is that he voted for prisoners to receive stimulus checks twice during the Trump presidency.
During the Trump administration, the Internal Revenue Service confirmed that it had issued 1.2 million payments to prisoners and to the immediate relatives of deceased individuals. After news got out, the administration tried to cut off the cash but lost a lawsuit filed on behalf of incarcerated individuals that argued the decision to withhold money was “arbitrary and capricious.”
Cotton also signed on in favor of the second round of coronavirus relief payments made in December 2020 that also included prisoners getting checks.
Despite the uproar, inmate advocates say most eligible prisoners won’t get their money because of roadblocks put up by the prison system, which include restricting access to tax forms they need in order to be eligible for payout.
“When an inmate is in [solitary], they do not have email, electronic bulletin board, or printing access,” Rhonda Fleming, a prisoner doing time in Florida for Medicare fraud, told The Marshall Project. “So inmates are being denied the ability to file for the stimulus check.”
She added that federal prisoners have to pay to print forms and that often printers are not working or accessible.
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But despite the hurdles, it is still technically possible for inmates such as Roof and Tsarnaev to get a stimulus payment. They would have to submit paperwork, have a valid Social Security card, and earn below the income threshold while behind bars.
