A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) suggests that the ongoing illegal immigration surge at the southern border will reduce the federal deficit by a staggering $897 billion over the next decade.
At first glance, this figure might seem like a silver lining to this national crisis. However, a closer examination reveals a more complex and concerning picture and reveals this report to be another example of the government trying to conceal the truth from American citizens.
While the CBO projects an increase in revenues of $1.175 trillion and an increase in mandatory spending and spending on net interest of $278 billion over the next 10 years, these numbers fail to capture the full scope of the situation. The report’s limitations and glaring omissions paint an incomplete picture that may lead to misguided policy decisions if Congress does not understand the actual fiscal impacts of the border crisis. By publishing such an incomplete report, CBO is playing a role in covering up the Biden-Harris border crisis and not giving Congress the information it needs to fix the problem.
One glaring omission is the exclusion of discretionary spending impacts. The CBO acknowledges that the immigration surge will likely put pressure on many programs funded through discretionary appropriations. In fact, CBO estimates that increased discretionary funding as a result of the border surge could total around $200 billion over the 2024-2034 period. This substantial sum is mentioned but not factored into the deficit reduction calculation because, as CBO says, “no clear basis exists for projecting how the immigration surge will affect [congressional] funding decisions.”
Moreover, the report “does not include estimates of the surge’s effects on state and local budgets.” The CBO itself admits that “[r]esearch has generally found that increases in immigration raise state and local governments’ costs more than their revenues, and CBO expects that finding to hold in the case of the current immigration surge.” New York City alone spent $4.3 billion from July 2022 to March 2024 to accommodate immigrants and comply with existing housing policies. Extrapolating this to other cities over a decade paints a sobering picture of the financial burden on local communities.
The state of Texas was forced to take action on its own. First with Operation Lone Star (OLS), a response to the border crisis triggered by the Biden-Harris administration’s failure to enforce federal laws along the border. OLS has cost Texans about $11 billion and that’s just to secure the border. That does not include costs to the state’s health care, education, and criminal justice systems — which increase with the addition of aliens who have been let in by the Biden-Harris administration. The CBO report does not adequately assess or include these costs and they can be found in every state.
The revenue calculations assume lower tax compliance rates among the population who entered the nation via the border crisis. This raises questions about the accuracy of the projected $1.2 trillion in additional revenue.
Beyond the fiscal impacts, the report hints at broader economic consequences. The illegal immigration surge is expected to lead to lower productivity, reduce average wage growth (particularly for non-college educated workers), higher interest rates, and increased medical and food prices. These factors could have far-reaching effects on the American economy and the well-being of citizens.
Perhaps most concerning is the CBO’s own admission that its “estimates of the budgetary effects of the immigration surge are highly uncertain.” The report lists numerous “[m]ajor sources of uncertainty,” including the number of aliens who have entered the country, the duration of the border crisis itself, the changing immigration status of individuals, and their impact on productivity. Essentially, many metrics crucial to the estimate are shrouded in uncertainty and the authors of the report knew it and still published these estimates that claim mass illegal immigration is good for the deficit.
Making policy decisions based on such questionable projections, where the political left has clearly put its thumb on the scale, could have disastrous consequences and exacerbate existing problems. We must demand a more comprehensive analysis that accounts for all costs — both seen and unseen. Not a report that is politically appealing to the left’s narrative on illegal immigration.
The border crisis is not just about numbers on a balance sheet. As we debate immigration policy, we must consider not just the potential fiscal benefits but also the hidden costs and societal impacts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated there were 74,702 fentanyl overdose deaths in the United States last year — a drug we know flows in through our open southern border.
Human trafficking and smuggling into the United States is a booming multi-billion dollar business for Mexican cartels. We must end this crisis now. When comparing the fiscal impacts to the human toll, money seems secondary and that is true, but understanding the monetary effects is important to solving the larger problem.
The CBO report should be seen as deficient and, overall, as a liability since it does not give Congress the information it needs to take action. The future of our nation depends on getting this right.
With an honest and complete assessment, we can get good legislation like the Secure the Border Act signed into law, force strong executive actions from future presidents, and keep Americans safe. These policies will ensure our nation knows who is coming in, and what the impacts of that are to U.S. citizens. But we need the CBO and Washington to stop playing politics with vital information.
You’ve seen “Black Women for Kamala” and even “White Dudes for Kamala,” but don’t expect to see “Parents for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”
Vice President Kamala Harris is squarely against parental control of what young children are taught about sex, gender and homosexuality in school. On Tuesday, she chose a running mate — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — a former schoolteacher who shares her extreme, anti-parent views.
Harris and Walz are out of line with what most Americans think. Not just Republicans; a majority of Hispanic and Black Democrats don’t want gender ideology in elementary school classrooms, according to Pew Research and You/Gov polls.
On July 25, Harris promised the American Federation of Teachers convention that she opposes the wave of state laws that bar preschool and elementary school teachers from indoctrinating children about sexual orientation and gender choices. Harris also opposes book bans, suggesting she’s OK with giving young children books that encourage them to question their own gender identity.
“We want to ban assault weapons. They want to ban books,” she railed. At issue are books for the youngest readers, like “I Am Jazz,” that tell little girls they can be boys, and little boys that they can be girls. Jazz “had a girl’s brain in a boy’s body. … Jazz was transgender.”
Parental rights and the innocence of young children are at stake in this election, warns Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, which launched an $18 million ad campaign across seven swing states. Schilling calls Harris an “extremist.”
All people, regardless of their sexual orientation, deserve respect. But parents need the final say on what their children are taught.
Harris has a history of bashing lawmakers who side with parents. At a June 23, 2023, pride rally, she called them “extremists.”
Who’s extreme here? You decide.
An AFT report deplores a Henrico County, Virginia, parent for questioning the appropriateness of “I’m a Gay Wizard,” a book in the school library, which depicts two boy characters having oral sex.
Former President Donald Trump vows to cut federal funding for any school or program that tries to push gender ideology and other “inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”
On June 18, Harris posted a picture of herself hugging a tall man in drag, dressed in a metallic bikini and stilettos, on Facebook, adding the message, “Our LGBTQI+ children should not fear who they are.”
Of course they shouldn’t. All children deserve respect.
But this battle isn’t about inclusion. Inclusion is a good thing. This is about indoctrination. According to the AFT, “Books that normalize sexual identity confusion can help young people realize that they are not alone in their struggle for identity clarity and confirmation.” What the AFT goes on to say is that “the lack of candid conversations in families” about “nonheterosexual identity development” must be offset by teachers bringing it up.
Sorry, most parents don’t want the AFT — or local school authorities — replacing family. Harris apparently does. So does her new running mate.
Minnesota parents who opposed “Call Me Max,” a book about a transgender boy, being read aloud in kindergarten asked why they should let a teacher plant seeds of doubt in their kindergarteners about their sexual identity. Several states have banned the book from classrooms, but amazingly, California’s state education department recommends it for kindergarteners, first graders and second graders.
On May 22, Walz signed a law barring parental groups from removing books or materials from Minnesota school libraries based on content, calling the parental efforts “regressive.” The bill mimics legislation already passed in California and other blue states that leaves educators, not families, in charge.
Walz also championed legislation to provide tampons in all boys’ bathrooms, in case a transgender needs one. That’s pushing an agenda.
Meanwhile, Harris mocks parents, exclaiming, “Book bans in this year of our Lord 2024.”
The choice in November is between California values — extremely liberal Harris values — or the values your family chooses.
Meanwhile, the real emergency in education is being ignored. Fewer than one-third of fourth graders are proficient in reading, and barely one-third are proficient in math.
Blame the AFT. Its website is all about immigration rights, transgender rights, banning firearms, and other political issues. Not a word about pedagogy — how to teach reading and math effectively.
After Walz’s selection Tuesday, both the AFT and National Education Association rushed to applaud the pick.
Parents: If you care about your children’s innocence and their future, don’t elect AFT toady Harris and her anti-parent running mate in November.
Betsy McCaughey is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
There are many ways the United States can fail in the areas of border security and immigration policy. Over the past three-and-a-half years, the Biden administration has managed to implement most of those failed policies. A Harris administration would almost certainly make those policy failures complete.
President Joe Biden entered the White House in 2021 with a clear objective to be the anti-Donald Trump president and undo Trump administration policies across the board. Nowhere did this undoing process have greater impact – and create more chaos – than at the U.S.-Mexico border.
On his first day in the Oval Office in 2021, Biden suspended the program formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols. It required immigrants seeking asylum in the United States to remain in Mexico while their cases made their way through U.S. immigration courts. That was the first green light to potential immigrants around the world – and, more importantly, to those who prey on them – that if they could set foot on U.S. soil and make a claim of asylum, they could likely remain in the United States indefinitely. The border became wide open.
Word spread through WhatsApp and other social media networks. Cartels and human traffickers used the policy change as a marketing strategy to compel desperate migrants to hand over their life savings and make the dangerous journey to the border. Immigrants were coached not to evade but instead to actually seek out law enforcement officials and request asylum — no matter how frivolous their claim.
In case axing the Remain in Mexico policy did not deliver a message that was abundantly clear, Biden followed up in April 2022 by rescinding Title 42, the Trump policy initiated during the pandemic that allowed the federal government to rapidly expel illegal immigrants apprehended at the border and block them from seeking asylum. The results were completely predictable.
According to Customs and Border Protection data, there were 73,994 “encounters” along the Southwest border in December 2020. One year later, that monthly figure was 179,253. In December 2022, the number rose to 252,315. Last December, there were 301,982 encounters.
In his zeal to appease progressives and burnish his anti-Trump credentials, Biden failed to consider – or worse, recognized and accepted – the consequences of incentivizing mass illegal immigration. Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden tasked with stemming illegal immigration’s “root causes” in March 2021, declared on NBC’s Meet the Press in September 2022: “We have a secure border in that that is a priority for any nation, including ours and our administration.” It was a lie.
Now that she is a presidential candidate, Democrats want you to believe Harris had nothing to do with immigration or the border. The American people know better. They also know that four more years of Biden-era immigration, economic, defense, energy and other policies will be a national disaster.
The Biden administration’s CBP numbers tell the story – 2.5 million encounters at the Southwest border in fiscal year 2023. That is why Gallup reported last month that “significantly more U.S. adults than a year ago, 55% versus 41%, would like to see immigration to the U.S. decreased.” That is the highest level for anti-immigration sentiment since immediately after the 9-11 attacks.
There are two related tragedies here. The first is for the migrants who have endured physical abuse, rape and murder to try to make asylum claims in the United States. Contrary to what the Biden administration and immigrant advocates would like you to believe, illegal migration is not a victimless crime, not to mention the crimes committed by some migrants in this country.
The second tragedy is that anti-immigration sentiment is rising at a time when our economy needs immigrant workers the most. Due primarily to demographics but also to cultural changes in the U.S. workforce, the United States simply does not produce enough native-born workers to fulfill the needs of the agriculture, healthcare and construction industries, to name a few.
The United States needs legal, orderly immigration policies that recognize both our security and economic interests. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s catastrophic failures on border security and immigration have understandably soured the American people on even sensible reforms. A Harris administration would only make those failures worse.
Dennis E. Nixon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and chairman and CEO of IBC Bank, based in Laredo, Texas. He has been deeply involved in border, trade and immigration policy for five decades.
Our federal system is aptly called the laboratory of democracy. Rather than learning everything from the school of hard knocks, states can look to the experience of others with initiatives like charter schools, right-to-work laws, and taxation levels. Unfortunately, there are some slow learners out there.
The IRS recently released its annual report of the net migration of people and money between states. Once again, the high tax-and-spend states lost out. California was the biggest income loser ($23.8 billion) in 2022, followed by New York (14.2), Illinois (9.8), New Jersey (5.3), and Massachusetts (3.9).
Florida gained $36 billion in migrating revenues. Texas realized $10.1 billion, followed by South Carolina, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Arizona gained $3.7 billion in gross adjusted income (AGI), mostly from the 57,857 people who migrated from California, compared to 25,677 moving from Arizona to California.
Who knew people prefer to live where housing is affordable, power is reliably available, and crime is taken seriously by authorities? California not only fails on these tests, but its gas taxes are the highest in the nation, which means gasoline costs $1 to $2 a gallon more and electricity bills are 2 to 3 times higher than states without California’s climate mandates. Temperatures don’t seem to be coming down much so far.
California’s median priced home is about double that of most states and the state tax on middle income earners is 9.3%, more than most states assess their millionaires. Governor Gavin Newsom can prattle on about the “California Dream” but Californians aren’t feeling it. They’re leaving if they can.
Moreover, it’s getting worse. California lost nearly 3 times as much income to other states in 2022 as it did in pre-COVID 2019. Even though housing costs discouraged many from moving, New York lost 1.8% of the total state AGI, 3.1% in 2021, and 2.5% in 2020.
Florida and Texas were among the beneficiaries, seeing 150 to 200% more income being transferred from high spending states than before the pandemic.
California, New York, Illinois, and other states have created a “doom loop” by their foolhardy fiscal policies. Fewer workers and less total income result in lower tax revenues. The tax-and-spenders must raise tax rates to maintain their social programs and promises to unions and to finance their rising debt. Rinse and repeat.
Most enterprises, faced with falling revenues and climbing expenses, would update their business model. But the high-tax states aren’t interested in changing their ways. California is moving forward with yet more climate mandates and boondoggles like the infamous “train to nowhere.” Illinois rejected fiscal discipline and instead passed a budget with $1.1 billion in tax increases. New Jersey, hemorrhaging jobs, went ahead anyway with reimposing a 2.5% surtax on corporate incomes.
Rather than pursuing modest reforms or spending cuts, the blue states are instead trying to force other states to help them pay for their high taxes. They love the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which requires taxpayers from Florida, Arizona, and other frugal states to pay part of the state tax bill for high earners from high-tax states. They are insistent that Congress remove the $10,000 cap on the deduction, which would further incentivize their excessive spending.
The cap raises about $80 billion a year of relief for federal taxpayers. The Brookings Institution found that if the SALT cap were eliminated, 57% of the benefit would go to the top 1% of earners. Still, the tax-and-spenders claim Congress “screwed” them by instituting the cap, thereby supposedly creating much of their fiscal woes.
States have become more careless in managing their pension fund obligations also. Raising benefit levels is popular, while funding can be deferred. Unsurprisingly, the result is chronic underfunding. New York has assets that would fund only 48% of future legal obligations according to standard accounting procedures and New Jersey is at 29%.
Future shortfalls will eventually result in public bankruptcies and destitute pensioners. Still states resist reforms, apparently assuming the feds would not ultimately deny requests for bailouts in such desperate circumstances.
States must be accountable for their own actions. They should not be allowed to exploit each other to cover for their moral and financial shortcomings.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
The catalog of Vice President Kamala Harris’s history on energy policy is as thin as the listing of her accomplishments as President Joe Biden’s “Border Czar,” which is to say it is bereft of anything of real substance.
But the queen of word salads and newly minted presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has publicly endorsed many of her party’s most radical and disastrous energy-related ideas while serving in various elected offices — both in her energy basket-case home state of California and in Washington, D.C.
What Harris’s statements add up to is a potential disaster for America’s future energy security.
“The vice president’s approach to energy has been sophomorically dilettantish, grasping not only at shiny things such as AOC’sGreen New Deal but also at the straws Americans use to suck down the drinks they need when she starts talking like a Valley Girl,” Dan Kish, a senior research fellow at Institute for Energy Research, told me in an email this week. “To be honest, she’s no worse than many of her former Senate colleagues who have helped cheer on rising energy costs and the fleeing American jobs that accompany them. She doesn’t seem to understand the importance of reliable and affordable domestic energy, good skilled jobs or the national security implications of domestically produced energy, but maybe she will go back to school on the matter. No doubt on her electric school bus.”
During her first run for the Senate in 2016, Harris said she would love to expand her state’s economically ruinous cap-and-trade program to the national level. She also endorsed then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s harebrained scheme to ban plastic straws as a means of fighting climate change.
Tim Stewart, president of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, told me proposals like that one would lead during a Harris presidency to the “Californication of the entire U.S. energy policy.” “Historically,” he added, “the transition of power from a president to a vice president is designed to signal continuity. This won’t be the case, because a Harris administration will be much worse.”
But how much worse could it be than the set of Biden policies that Harris has roundly endorsed over the last three and a half years? How much worse can it be than having laughed through a presidency that:
As Biden’s successor for the nomination, Harris becomes the proud owner of all these policies, and more.
But Harris’ history shows it could indeed get worse. Much worse, in fact.
While mounting her own disastrous campaign for her party’s presidential nomination in 2020, Harris endorsed a complete ban on hydraulic fracturing, i.e., fracking. She later conformed that position to Biden’s own, slightly less insane view, but only after being picked as his running mate.
Consider also that while serving in the Senate in early 2019, Harris chose to sign up as a co-sponsor of the ultra-radical Green New Deal proposed by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. It is not enough that the Biden regulators appeared to be using that nutty proposal and climate alarmism as the impetus to transform America’s entire economy and social structure: Harris favors enacting the whole thing.
As I have detailed here many times, every element of climate-alarm-based energy policies adopted by the Biden administration will inevitably lead the United State to become increasingly reliant on China for its energy needs, in the process decimating our country’s energy security. By her own words and actions, Harris has made it abundantly clear she wants to shift the process of getting there into a higher gear.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
President Joe Biden’s time in the White House is mercifully coming to an end. He is now officially a lame duck with six months to go.
Biden was a victim here of a corrupt Democratic machine that — along with a complicit media — thought they could pull off a grand election-year deceit, despite his failing cognitive abilities. The Democratic establishment and a compliant media convinced millions of primary voters that Biden was of sound mind and ready to serve four more years. This lust for power put America in danger.
How could they be so unpatriotic?
So, where will Biden stand in the history books? He was not a failed president because of his declining cognitive abilities. It was his policies that wrecked America.
It is hard to point to a single policy that he got right. On the economy, he was catastrophically bad.
The trillions of dollars of debt he rung up bought nothing. He sent inflation to the highest levels in almost forty years.
The average family lost $2,000 of income after inflation during his reign. More people died of COVID during his presidency than Trump’s — despite the availability of the vaccine.
Interest rates rose. Biden declared war on American energy. He put America back into the Paris Climate Accord—and the rest of the world went on using more fossil fuels than ever. By impeding U.S. oil and gas production and pipelines he played into the hands of our enemies — China and Iran.
Gas prices rose. Small business confidence sagged. Poverty rates rose.
Then there was the sheer incompetence. The bungled Afghanistan withdrawal was a national security disaster. The border became a broken dam with millions seeking to illegally enter the country. The government spent $7.5 billion on electric vehicle chargers and only a handful got built.
Biden gave away hundreds of billions of dollars for an illegal and immoral student loan forgiveness program. He put regulators in charge of key agencies even though — or because — they hate business. A majority of his appointees had no business experience. It showed.
When he departs the White House in the months ahead he will leave the nation poorer, weaker, more divided, more in debt, more vulnerable, and less respected than when he entered office.
This was a man who pledged to unite the country and did just the opposite. He deserves to go down in history as one of the five worst presidents of the 20th and 21st century.
Here is my list starting with the worst: 1) Woodrow Wilson; 2) Herbert Hoover: 3) Jimmy Carter; 4) Joe Biden; 5) Barack Obama.
Now the Democrats want to run Vice President Kamala Harris, who was on board with every Biden policy and helped oversee the worst border catastrophe in modern history.
Just when you thought things could not get any worse.
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.
