It's interesting, Kurt, that you have so much to say about immigrants and government benefits but you're as silent as a ghost when it comes to Trump's corruption and cutting of those government benefits. 

Why don't you talk about the Trump Crime Family? 

 kurtster wrote:
Well, small-l libertarian, here's an exhaustive report from the Cato Institute.  It's about the fiscal impacts (not just on government budgets, but on the economy as a whole) of immigration. It deals mostly with legal but also illegal immigration.

And before you start: legal immigrants have access to government services that illegal immigrants do not, but both pay taxes. 

It goes into massive detail about the math and methodology of their results. It is, in a word, transparent. It uses historical data because when you do real social science you have to use the data you can actually get. This puts them at a disadvantage to groups like the Center for Immigration Studies—they can use more current data because they make it up. Good luck finding out their methodology.

You can lie in real time. Actual social science research can't keep up with that.

And yes, I advocate for open borders. I consider that to be the only position consistent with my commitment to human rights, which include the rights to live, work, and travel. These rights do not depend on where you were born, who your parents are, what you look like, or what language you grew up speaking.

And small-l libertarians are generally in opposition to the prosecution of victimless crimes and the jack-booted thugs that enforce them, but for some of them when it's brown people under the heel suddenly they get a taste for those boots.

 kurtster wrote:
And anyone with more melanin than you should be deported. Got it. 

 Isabeau wrote: 
FYT's

 kurtster wrote:

OOoo. Let's conflate compassion with 'open borders!' Magat monkeys are so fekking predictable.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
Then show them.  Something current that you consider to be correct.

And I did not call anyone a whacko.  Fringe as in small is what I said.

Myself, I have quite the small l libertarian bent.  You claim that you like borders, you just want them to be open and unrestricted based on comments over the years.

 kurtster wrote:
Yes, as I pointed out, there are people pulling numbers out of their asses. Center for Immigration Studies isn't just "hawkish", they're partisan anti-immigration nativists. And they make up numbers no one outside nativist circles believes, and people with similar agendas quote them. There are people doing actual research on this topic to find the truth, and their numbers look nothing like these.

Oh, we absolutely have (and need) borders. Borders are the divide where one government's jurisdiction ends and another's begins. 

And yes, I belong to a fringe minority that believes that rights (like the right to travel, to work, to live unmolested) don't come from a status granted by government, they come from being human. You know, like the people who wrote the founding documents of our republic. Whackos like that. Proud to stand with their legacy, however unfashionable it has become.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
Here is something more recent than 2018.  I am surprised that you would try and sneak something so outdated and essentially irrelevant to back up your argument.

This is from a House report in 2023.  And it provides the range of number I cited.

What They Are Saying: Homeland Majority’s Fourth Interim Report on the Financial Cost of Secretary Mayorkas’ Border Crisis 

“A new House Homeland Security Committee report has found that the ongoing migrant crisis at the southern border could cos taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars each year, as Republicans blame what they say are ‘open borders’ policies from the Biden administration.

“It cites studies by the hawkish Center for Immigration Studies, which found that the annual cost to care for and house illegal immigrants could reach up to $451 billion. It separately cites estimates from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates for lower immigration levels, that the annual net burden as of 2022 is more than $150 billion.

“The report points to health care costs, including Medicaid expenditures for illegal immigrants estimated at over $5 billion a year, the costs of the fentanyl crisis, law enforcement costs, and costs for states to educate migrant children. It also points to the costs of housing and sheltering— particularly in the enormous costs seen in cities like New York City where tens of thousands of migrants have traveled after being released into the U.S., and the costs to ranchers and local businesses near the border. New York City Mayor Eric Adams earlier this year estimated the city’s crisis alone could cost $12 billion by 2025.”
...

“The population of the United States is roughly 330 million, plus perhaps 15 million illegal migrants. Even if the federal and state governments are spending only $160 billion per year, the spending would be the equivalent of $500 per American man, woman, child, and retiree.

“If the $500 per American was not spent on migrants, it would otherwise go to Americans’ needs, via higher wages, lower taxes, and lower rents, reduced government deficits, or more investment in Americans’ schools, technology, and infrastructure.

“The huge cost of Biden’s migration is driven by the daily welfare cost of caring for poor migrants. Even when migrants get jobs, their wages are often too little to pay off their smuggling debts, their rental checks, and their basic needs.”

I know, you don't believe that there is such a thing as an illegal immigrant or that we even should have a border.  But that is you.  You do belong to a certified minority fringe group so there is that, too.  Do you even believe in private property ?

 kurtster wrote:
Welcome to federalism. States are sovereign, not subordinate, and some of them will do things you don't like. Like supporting people you don't like.

Yes, money is fungible, but the feds only pay the states for the portion of Medicaid recipients that qualify for federal funds. If the states stopped paying for Medicaid for the undocumented the federal contribution would not change at all. Yes, those programs are costing some taxpayers somewhere, but they aren't costing the country as a whole. And we're talking about federal policy here. If you want to argue that the 6 states that cover Medicaid for the undocumented then take it up with them.

There are federally-supported government activities (like K-12 education) where eligibility isn't checked, and some fraction of the portion of the budget (currently about 13.6%) is coming from the feds. Total federal payments to the states for K-12 education (and Headstart) is $268B, so do the math.

Oh right, you're on Team MAGA—I'll do the math for you. New America estimates that undocumented students make up about 1% of all students in public schools. As a check, high-end estimates are about 14 million undocumented immigrants here, out of a population of 340 million, about .4%. Immigrants skew younger (childbearing age) so doubling that number would give us .8% of the school-aged children. Some of the children of the undocumented were born here, making them citizens*, which would bring that number down, but we'll ignore that for now.

But let's say New America is way off—factor of two, say—so let's double that again to 2%. So you could credibly claim that $5.36B of the federal education spending goes to people you would rather drag off in an unmarked van and ship to a for-profit gulag in San Salvador.

The undocumented are paying a heroic share of the Social Security and FICA taxes, especially considering that they'll never get a dime of that money back, as they are ineligible for those benefits. So is there a net cost to taxpayers? Maybe, but it's nothing—like absolutely nothing—like the numbers you're quoting.

Yes, there are people who are lying about how much that is, pulling numbers out of their ample asses with absolutely nothing to back them up. It's like looking at a puddle on the sidewalk and saying "Some people are saying this puddle is miles deep. Miles. So deep. You know, and the crooked press will tell you it's just a puddle, but it's more like the ocean—and I live by the beach, so I know—lived there for years. Years and years. And the ocean is big. So big. We have the biggest ocean, and I renamed it because it's ours, not Mexico's. We're taking back the ocean! And the women! On the beach. The way they dress, it's very distracting.  But the water—there's a lot of it. Way more than they said. Yuge."

And then someone actually measures the puddle and it's like a quarter inch deep, so what the heck, we'll graciously compromise and call it one mile.

No, you don't get to split the difference between a lie and reality and claim you're being generous. You're just lying a little less.

*No, you're wrong, they are in fact citizens, just like the plain language of the 14th amendment (and the people who drafted it) say. Jeebus. 

 Lazy8 wrote: 
Who says that these states are not using fed money ?  Money is fungible.  

Medicaid is presently funded by the federal government with a formula based upon matching state expenditures.  So the states say that they fund the illegals yet that money gets tied into the fed matching and therefore draws in more federal money based on the state's total Medicaid expenditures.

I'm sick and tired of people saying that paying for illegals is no big deal.  Whatever goes to illegals is taken away from US citizens.

The net annual total cost to taxpayers runs from a very low estimate of $150 billion per year to up to $450 billion per year and those numbers are after the taxes paid into the system by illegals are accounted for.  I'll split the difference and give it as at least $300 billion per year.  That is not chump change.  That is about $1 trillion every 3 years spent on 20 million illegals.  That is a hugely disproportionate piece of the pie for a group of people this size. 

 kurtster wrote:
Those states are paying for migrant medicaid with their own money, not the feds'.  There are only a few classes of non-citizens who are eligible for federal assistance, and the undocumented are not among them.

 Proclivities wrote: 
False.  These are just two of the states that give Medicaid to illegals.

These Democratic governors are trying to curb health care for unauthorized immigrants

 Red_Dragon wrote:

ONLY THE WEAK WILL FAIL!

 Proclivities wrote:

Typical of the callous evil that owns her party.

GOP Senator On Fears Medicaid Cuts Will Lead To Deaths: ‘We All Are Going To Die’

“It’s corrections of overpayments and of people who have not been eligible for these programs, by law as it is currently written,” Ernst said before her constituent pointed out that people will die. “When you are arguing about illegals who are receiving Medicaid benefits, 1.4 million, they are no eligible, so they will be coming off.”
This is total bullshit.
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) pointed out while arguing against the bill last week that of the millions of Americans projected to lose coverage because of the “big, beautiful” bill, exactly zero are undocumented, as undocumented immigrants are ineligible for Medicaid.

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ties to white nationalist Nick Fuentes revealed

Just after 1:00 this morning, the House Rules Committee began its hearing on what congressional Republicans have officially named The One Big, Beautiful Bill.
But the center of the bill is indeed related to money: it is the $3.8 trillion extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the wealthy and corporations.
Yesterday the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that Americans in the lowest tenth of earners will lose money under the measure while people in the top five percent of earners will see a tax cut of $117.2 billion, more than 20% of the tax cuts in the bill. Poorer Americans take a hit from the bill because it cuts federal healthcare and food assistance programs to partially offset the costs of the tax cuts.
Cuts to Medicaid are expected to leave at least 9 million people without healthcare coverage. Cuts of about 30% to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would be “the biggest cut in the program’s history,” Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Lorie Konish of CNBC. They would cut about $300 billion from the program through 2034. More than 40 million people, including children, seniors, and adults with disabilities, receive food assistance.

Yesterday the CBO reported that the measure will add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over ten years, and noted that when a budget adds too much to the federal deficit, it triggers cuts to Medicare (not a typo) under the Pay-As-You-Go law. The CBO explains that those cuts are limited by law to 4% but would still total about $490 billion from 2027 through 2034.
Tobias Burns of The Hill summed it up: “Republicans’ tax-and-spending cut bill will take from the poor and give to the rich, Congress’s official scoring body has found.”
Tonight, after 22 hours of debate and after a set of amendments made steeper cuts to Medicaid to woo far-right Republicans, the House Rules Committee agreed to move the bill forward to the House itself. There, Republican leadership intends to push it through as quickly as possible, originally hoping to have the vote over by 6:00 Thursday morning. In 2025 the Republicans’ signature bill redistributes wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest. Knowing the provisions in the bill will be enormously unpopular, the Republicans have been jamming it through, often in the middle of the night, as quickly as they could.

— Heather Cox Richardson  5/21/25

 Red_Dragon wrote:
It's "Let Them Eat Tariffs" now, c'mon get with the times RD. 

 Steely_D wrote:

Let 'em eat cake.

After-tax income under the Trump/GOP budget:

-People making less than $17/k year: LOSE $1000
-People making between $17k and $51k/yr: LOSE $700
-People making over $4.3M/year: GAIN $389,000

This is what class warfare looks like.

-Robert Reich