US Government Sends Stimulus Checks To Prisoners

Not a great deal has gone right so far with the government’s $787 billion stimulus package. There is no evidence that it has reached it primary goal of saving or creating as many as 3.5 million jobs. Perhaps that will come next year when more stimulus money reaches further into the employment market.

The goal of building broadband and energy grid infrastructure does not appear to have begun in earnest. No one has given a clear time table for when those things will happen.

Stimulus checks have begun to go out to millions of Americans. The amount of the check is $250. They have been earmarked for Social Security recipients, people receiving Supplemental Security Income, and several other needy groups which total over 50 million people.

The other beneficiaries of the government’s largess is people in prisons. About 3,900 citizens who are locked up received their payments recently. That money can probably be used to buy cigarettes and cakes with files in them.

The government has goofed again. The number of prisoners who got the checks is small, but the fact that they got them at all is an embarrassment.

Douglas A. McIntyre