Prison inmates made out like bandits during the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to internal data provided by the IRS, more than 1.1 million incarcerated inmates received stimulus checks, totaling over $1.3 billion dollars.
In a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner, Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said of the million incarcerated inmates, 163,000 of them were serving life sentences.
“It’s outrageous that those who inflicted pain on a family or community by committing a crime received a single dime from the government during the pandemic. If anything, the funds should have gone to the victims who would have been better served,” Bacon said.
As the country is facing dwelling inflation, the government doled out a massive amount of paychecks to people as the Biden administration refused to allow hard-working Americans make money of their own.
“When we discovered that incarcerated individuals previously received stimulus checks, an amendment was introduced to block them in the second round, and Democrats voted against it…. it’s disgusting, and Democrats who voted against the amendment should be ashamed,” Bacon continued to say.
Bacon and several other Republicans attempted to prevent inmates from receiving stimulus checks, however a group of Democrats shot that idea down.
Earlier this year, a class-action lawsuit on behalf of prisoners was filed and a North Carolina judge ruled that the federal government could not deny stimulus checks to U.S. citizens just because they are incarcerated.
According to the Washington Post, at least the $163 billion has been wasted from Covid-19 unemployment payments alone, reported by a Labor Department watchdog.