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Redstate
CBO’s
Unicorn Cost Study on Amnesty
By Daniel Horowitz
June 18th, 2013
Repealing
Obamacare will increase
the deficit by $109 billion over 10 years.
That
was a headline from a CBO
report in May when Republicans voted on full repeal of Obamacare. Somehow, when it comes to
ascertaining the
costs of wrongheaded policy, CBO wants us to engage in willing
suspension of
disbelief. The most
costly entitlement
will actually reduce the deficit, they claim.
In Washington, up is down and down is up.
We
are now seeing the same thing
with the amnesty/immigration deform bill.
You need not be an actuary to understand
that 11 million poor illegals
and tens of millions of other poor legal immigrants and guest workers,
along
with their American-born children, will wind up receiving a lot more in
benefits that they pay in taxes. Yet,
CBO will have you believe that this bill will actually reduce the
deficit over
10 and 20 years by $197 billion and $700 billion respectively. In fact, the only main
costs in this bill are
the border security provisions.
Well,
if you take their estimate to
its logical conclusion, we should double the number of illegal
immigrants,
thereby doubling the level of deficit reduction.
Also, countries like Mexico should be
economic superpowers by now. It’s this sort of dyslexic bean counting
that has
led to $17 trillion in debt.
When
determining whether a
population would be a net contributor or a net recipient to the
tax/benefit
structure we have in this country, you have to understand that
tax/benefit
structure. All
conservatives agree that
when the income level is relatively low, those individuals will be net
recipients; hence, the progressive system that everyone on the right
rails
against. Yet,
somehow, when that simple
fact is extrapolated to new immigrants, some of these people get
disgruntled.
But
CBO fails to factor in the
degree of progressivity to our tax system even for the native
population. In
2011, CBO issued an analysis showing that
our tax and government transfer system had become less redistributive
since
1979. At the time,
I showed that, in
fact, the share of income taxes paid by the top 1% grew from 19% to
36.7% while
the share of the bottom 50% shrunk from 7% to 2.25%.
Meanwhile, government transfer payments
have
exploded since 1979.
But
somehow CBO found that our
system had become less redistributive since the growth of refundable
tax
credits and welfare programs. With
that
in mind, it’s no enigma that they believe a low-income group of aliens
will
also be net contributors.
Here
are some other points to
consider:
Within
5 years of passage, anyone
who came here under the age of 16 (with no maximum age cap) will be
eligible
for citizenship along with their spouses and children.
Those who have already been deported but
otherwise eligible for the Dream Act will enjoy that status as well. Additionally, all illegals
who are Ag workers
will get green cards in 5 years. That
represents a huge population of young, poor people who will be eligible
for
every program within the 10-year budget frame, plus in-state tuition
and
student loans...
Read
the rest of the article at
Redstate
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