Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a notorious flip-flopper, pulled another fast one after having denied previously that illegal immigrants would receive payments as part of the recently passed stimulus package.
As both the Senate majority whip and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Durbin is currently one of the most powerful members of Congress. So it’s no surprise that others in the party have followed lockstep with his dishonesty and hypocrisy.
But at least he was honest about it before blazing ahead with his support for the payments for illegals, according to a release from the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
“[T]here are people, a discrete class of people, who might have a social security number, be undocumented, and receive a check,” Durbin admitted during a floor statement Thursday.
“And because of that clarification and my own investigation afterwards, I will concede their point,” he continued. “I overstated my case.”
By “overstate” what Durbin meant was that while debating an amendment from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to block the payments in question, prior to the bill’s Senate passage, he had claimed that Cruz’s statements were “just plain false.”
Mainstream media dutifully reported the Democrat’s lie as fact, while social media chimed in to bludgeon Cruz.
Sen. Cruz’s amendment is estimated to block stimulus checks from two million qualifying U.S. citizen children with undocumented parents, including 350,000 kids in Texas. These American kids should receive this relief just as other American kids do. Chair @SenatorDurbin objects ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/Nz56w1k0pd
— Senate Judiciary Committee (@JudiciaryDems) March 6, 2021
NRSC Spokesman T.W. Arrighi condemned the misappropriation of funds to Democrats’ recent imports.
“In a $2 trillion bill, of which less than 10% goes toward actual COVID relief, Senate Democrats have decided to allow taxpayer dollars in stimulus checks to be sent to illegal immigrants,” Arrighi said in a press release. “Hardworking Americans who are trying to make ends meet, from Arizona to Georgia, will no doubt wonder why their Senators are prioritizing illegal immigrants over them.”
As well as subsidizing non-citizens, the bill also sent payments to incarcerated felons, even though they have not endured any COVID-related expenses or hardships.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., introduced a measure to block those payments, but it was likewise shut down by Durbin & Co.
Again, the NRSC noted that Democrats had pandered to one of its prospective future voter bases to the detriment of many law-abiding citizens who were unexpectedly deprived of payments after the income threshold was lowered.
“This comes after moderate Senate Democrats altered the bill to reduce the number of Americans that can receive checks,” said NRSC Spokeswoman Lizzie Litzow in a press release. “They better have a good answer as to why prisoners are receiving checks when some of their hardworking, law-abiding constituents are not.”
According to Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., if Democrats had eliminated the pork from their $1.9 trillion boondoggle, the same amount of money could have delivered $10,000 payments to many Americans.
But instead, they stealthily inserted three last-minute tax hikes and a provision preventing states that received funding from the bill to cut their taxes.
