Prairie State Wire

GOP candidate for U.S. Senate Kathy Salvi is calling attention to more than $1 billion in COVID-19 relief funds sent to incarcerated applicants, including over 163,000 serving life sentences.

"Tammy Duckworth voted to send more than $1 billion of your tax dollars to murderers, rapists, car jackers and other career criminals," Salvi said in a statement. "It's preposterous to think career criminals are benefitting from these funds via the COVID-19 recovery process.”

Salvi said Duckworth doesn't care about the people of Illinois.

"The idea that this stimulus money went to criminals instead of hard working Americans is just another example that Tammy Duckworth doesn't care about the people of Illinois. The idea Republicans tried to add language to prevent this from happening yet were ignored by Democrats showed the priorities of Duckworth and others are misguided,” Salvi said. "With spending like this, it's no wonder Tammy Duckworth and Joe Biden's policies have caused Americans across the nation to suffer through record inflation. Whose side is Tammy Duckworth on anyway? The taxpayer or the criminal?”

According to the Internal Revenue Service data, over $1.3 billion worth of COVID-19 stimulus checks were distributed to prisoners all around the United States.

Federal prisoners received 1,560,000 checks and state prisoners accounted for 982,000 more. Of those, 163,000 were serving life sentences.

Stimulus money was given to prisoners via checks, direct deposits and debit cards.

Don Bacon (R-NE), along with other Republicans, tried to include wording to the third COVID-19 relief bill that would prevent stimulus funds from going to inmates.

Numerous Republicans have criticized Democrats for rejecting an amendment to the American Rescue Plan that would have stopped inmates' economic impact payments.