Last week, Democrats passed the long-awaited pandemic relief bill after weeks of wrangling in Congress.
The $1.9 trillion package passed in the Senate this past Saturday and now heads to the Democratic-led House of Representatives once again for final approval before being signed into law by President Joe Biden.
In addition to preserving expanded unemployment benefits and allocating additional funds for vaccine rollouts, the highly popular legislation includes $1400 stimulus checks to most individual Americans, with increased funds for couples and those with children.
Every Republican Senator voted against the bill despite its popularity, and they're scrambling to come up with new attacks against it.
Such was the case with Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), who slammed the bill for not excluding convicted criminals from relief checks.
Cotton failed to mention that prisoners were granted stimulus checks in both relief bills passed under the Trump administration, because these bills—like the one recently voted on by the Senate—didn't include language explicitly forbidding them from receiving the checks.
The IRS attempted to block prisoners from getting checks, but because the law didn't exclude them, a judge ruled the agency didn't have the legal authority to do so.
Nevertheless, Cotton voted in favor of the package both times.
He correctly pointed out that Democrats this time voted down a proposed Republican amendment that would've blocked checks from all incarcerated people, despite those in prison being uniquely susceptible to the highly contagious virus.
The Senator's claims were soon fact-checked by CNN's Daniel Dale.
I have a full check coming. But the suggestion that prisoners got checks because of a "liberal judge" is multi-wrong: 1) Trump signed bill. 2) Republicans including Cotton voted for bill. 3) Even conservative tax experts said IRS couldn't go add a prisoner ban that wasn't there.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 8, 2021
Cotton's moral high ground soon eroded.
Dale was far from the only one to push back against Cotton's latest talking point.
Democrats in Congress aim to have the bill on Biden's desk by March 14, just before expanded unemployment benefits expire.
