"CBO Estimate of Senate Amnesty Grossly Understated, Asserts FAIR"

Posted Sat, Aug 26, 2006 at 10:33 am
From this:
The estimate by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), released [last] Friday, that the Senate-passed guest worker amnesty bill (S. 2611) would cost the country a net amount of $127 billion over the next ten years is misleading and grossly underestimates the real fiscal impact, contends the Federation from American Immigration Reform (FAIR). According to FAIR, the CBO estimate includes only the fiscal impact at the federal level, but ignores the much greater impact S. 2611 would have on state and local governments.

An estimate of the fiscal impact at the local level by FAIR identifies a cost of $70 billion per year by 2020, primarily for education and health care. The $70 billion annual price tag does not include a number of other likely cost increases for programs such as assisted housing and other social welfare programs.

"The formidable cost estimate by the CBO of the Senate amnesty bill is only the tip of the iceberg," commented FAIR president Dan Stein. "The full impact of this disastrous legislation won't begin to be felt for another decade. Once millions of illegal aliens become eligible for all government programs, benefits and services, the fiscal impact on local governments are likely to be catastrophic."

Supporters of the Senate-passed amnesty/guest worker bill are attempting to lessen the impact of the CBO projection by noting that the enforcement-only bill passed by the House of Representatives (H.R. 4437) also comes with a hefty price tag. While that is true, because the House bill does not include amnesty and expanded admission of low-wage workers, these would be one-time-only expenditures, not an ever expanding liability. The enforcement measures in the House bill, if implemented, would result in reduced state and local costs as the illegal alien population began to decrease...

Comments

perroazul del norte (not verified)

Sun, 08/27/2006 - 15:10

The SPLC is a neo-McCarthyite outfit that constantly trades in smear tactics and guilt by association.

(...)
In the vanguard of this rhetorical shift is the veteran witch-hunter and professional character assassin Morris Dees, whose Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has become the premier rightist-baiting outfit in the country. Dees has constructed an elaborate conspiracy theory in which virtually all of the groups and individuals to the right of William F. Buckley, Jr., are part of some vast interconnected network of cells, a "leaderless resistance" allegedly invented by Louis Beam, an obscure right-wing "theoretician" who Dees and his "researchers" imagine to be a kind of far right Svengali. The SPLC peddles a brand of conspiracism just as garbled and elaborately wrongheaded as some of the wackos they "investigate," and in this sense the group is a scam, a fundraising machine that pays Dees an exorbitant salary. As his former partner, Millard Farmer, put it to the Progressive: "I thought he was sincere. I thought the Southern Poverty Law Center raised money to do good for poor people, not simply to accumulate wealth." In another sense, however, the SPLC is deadly dangerous, a private spy agency that runs an "intelligence project" aimed at political dissent, This was brought home in an article in their quarterly Intelligence Report, "Kosovo and the Far Right"

dchamil (not verified)

Sun, 08/27/2006 - 03:43

Gary Denton, you need to find somebody else besides SPLC to support your attack on FAIR. The article in Harper's mentioned by D. Flinchum entitled "The Church of Morris Dees" is from November 2000. The idea is that Dees is "selling indulgences" to aging white liberals -- like my own mother. For a contribution, Pope Dees will absolve you from the dreaded sin of racism. The article contains other eye-openers like employees quitting en masse due to the fact that Dees isn't spending enough time or money helping the poor with their legal difficulties. The SPLC has offices in a splendid new building known locally as "The Poverty Palace."

D Flinchum (not verified)

Sun, 08/27/2006 - 02:54

The Southern Poverty Law Center was started as a group that would protect the civil rights of mainly black Americans. It has turned into a joke. It now spends its time chasing down nebulous "hate groups" and paying huge salaries to certain employees, among them founder Morris Dees, while raising money from very gullible people. I started donating to them back in 1973 when they were actually doing some good, but stopped after seeing the direction in which they were heading. An article in "Harpers" some years back totally shreaded SPLC. Go to the web site below and check out Financial Management, where you'll see, among other facts, "The American Institute of Philanthropy, an independent charity watchdog organization, gave SPLC a grade of F because SPLC spends only 51 to 65% of its income on program services, and because it continues to fundraise even as though it is cash-rich with $137 million assets."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Poverty_Law_Center

Gary Denton (not verified)

Sat, 08/26/2006 - 15:49

Like FAIR is known for correct and non-misleading statistics.

Although FAIR professes to support a just and fair immigration policy, its policy rhetoric is often inflammatory, clearly anti-immigrant, and usually partisan. FAIR