Biden to Spend the Same on Health Care for Illegals This Year as Trump Did on the Wall

Democrats are continuing to remind us that the costs of illegal immigration far exceed the costs of preventing it.

Just four months into the Biden presidency we’ve seen a surge in illegal migration on the U.S. border, and the health care costs alone associated with that are on track to nearly equal what Trump spent on the border wall by year-end.

According to Breitbart:

President Trump asked for $5.6 billion to be spent on the wall [in 2018], but Democrats dug in their heels and said that was too much.  Many didn’t want to spend a dime.  In the end, Congress appropriated only $1.375 billion.

A few weeks later, Trump declared a national emergency on the border and announced that he would redirect an initial $3.8 billion in defense appropriations to building additional border wall.  That move triggered multiple lawsuits from the Left, which ultimately failed to stop the money from being redirected.

When the dust settled at the end of 2020, the Trump Administration had spent (or had begun the process of spending) just over $9  billion on approximately 400 miles of border wall.

Fast forward to the present.  Last week, President Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services redirected $2 billion from various health programs intended primarily for Americans to be spent instead on healthcare and transportation costs for illegal alien minors.  A leaked briefing to HHS officials indicated that a total of $8.6 billion in spending would be redirected to benefit the illegal aliens by October.

In 1996, Congress passed, and Bill Clinton signed, a law that prohibited giving any “federal public benefit” to illegal aliens, including health benefits. It seems that law will not be followed.

In December of 2018 the longest government shutdown in U.S. history began. According to a forecast by Moody’s Analytics economist Mark Zandi, the government shutdown cost the economy $8.7 billion, and the CBO estimates the cost at $11 billion. The shutdown stemmed from Democrats refusing Trump’s aforementioned demand in $5.7 billion in federal funds for a border wall – a requested amount less costly than the subsequent shutdown they called.

Matt Palumbo is the author of Dumb and Dumber: How Cuomo and de Blasio Ruined New York, Debunk This: Shattering Liberal Lies, and Spygate

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