Study sets off immigration bill squabble

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan Senate immigration bill would cost the government a net $6.3 trillion over the next 50 years to provide benefits for millions of people now living in the U.S. illegally, the Heritage Foundation said in a report Monday, setting off a fierce dispute with fellow conservatives who attacked the study as flawed and political.

The study from the prominent conservative think tank said immigrants granted new legal status under the bill would eat up more than $9 trillion in health, education, retirement and other benefits over their lifetime, while contributing only around $3 trillion in taxes. Republicans and conservative groups who support the bill quickly countered that the study failed to measure broader economic benefits from an immigration overhaul, including a more robust workforce that would boost the gross domestic product.

“The Heritage Foundation document is a political document; it’s not a very serious analysis,” said former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican who’s part of a task force with the nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center that supports the bill. “This study is designed to try to scare conservative Republicans into thinking the cost here is going to be so gigantic that you can’t possibly be for it.”

Former Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., the Heritage Foundation’s new president, dismissed such criticism.

“It’s clear a number of people in Washington who might benefit from an amnesty, as well as a number of people in Congress, do not want to consider the costs,” DeMint said. “No sensible thinking person could read this study and conclude that over 50 years that it could possibly have a positive economic impact.”

The brouhaha developed as both sides prepare for the landmark bill to undergo its first tests later this week in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will begin voting on amendments Thursday. It underscored the high political stakes for both supporters and opponents, as each jockeyed to define the legislation. And it laid bare splits within the Republican Party, where business-oriented leaders such as Barbour and anti-tax activist Grover Norquist are pushing for immigration reform, while more ideologically focused lawmakers and groups are voicing increasingly loud opposition.

The Heritage report was a reprisal of a study the group released at the height of the last congressional debate on immigration, in 2007, which said the bill being considered then would have cost $2.6 trillion. That figure, too, was disputed, but it carried weight with Republicans and helped lead to the legislation’s eventual defeat in the Senate.

This time, supporters of the bill are determined not to let opponents wrest control of the debate. Anticipating Heritage’s release of its new report, bill supporters responded quickly with conference calls and talking points criticizing its methodology and the foundation’s agenda.

The Heritage authors acknowledged their report does not attempt to offer a comprehensive analysis of the entire 844-page immigration bill, which would boost border security, change legal immigration and worker programs, require all employers to check their workers’ legal status and offer eventual citizenship to the estimated 11 million immigrants already living in the country illegally.

Instead, the Heritage study focused almost exclusively on the added costs the government would incur in providing benefits to immigrants here illegally once they gain legal status. These include Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, health care, welfare, public education, and services like police and fire protection, highways and parks. The study said an average adult now living in the U.S. illegally would receive $592,000 more in government benefits over a lifetime than he or she would pay in taxes.

“It becomes extraordinarily expensive,” the lead author, Robert Rector, said at a press conference near the Capitol for unveiling the report.

Costs are higher for this bill than the last one in 2007, Rector said, partly because government spending itself has grown more generous.

Heritage is not the only conservative voice opposing the bill. A number of lawmakers led by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., have also been working to defeat it. Some talk radio hosts, including Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh, have begun to voice deep unease despite the efforts of the bill’s conservative standard bearer, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., to sell the legislation to them and other conservative opinion leaders. Talk radio was instrumental to the bill’s defeat in 2007.

But other opposition groups have been less influential, and so far, opposition has remained relatively muted compared to what it was in 2007. Meanwhile, supporters have assembled a wide and diverse coalition in support of the bill.

Several groups in that coalition criticized the Heritage report’s assertions Monday, including an assumption that most newly legalized immigrants would remain in households that consume more government benefits than they pay in taxes, discounting the possibility that many of them would become upwardly mobile, move into higher tax brackets, pay more in taxes and use fewer services.

“It doesn’t match what has happened in America,” Barbour said.

Barbour was joined on a conference call by economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and chief economic adviser to Republican Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign who now heads the American Action Forum, a conservative public policy institute.

Holtz-Eakin dismissed the Heritage study, saying it failed to measure broader economic benefits from the legalization of a large new workforce and that 50 years is too long a time frame for an accurate assessment of the impact. Holtz-Eakin has conducted an analysis concluding that because of low U.S. birth rates, the economy and population will decline without immigration. An immigration overhaul, he said, would boost annual GDP growth by nearly a percentage point and reduce federal deficits by more than $2.5 trillion over 10 years.

“All that is absolutely absent from this study, which as a result is a narrow, incomplete look at the immigration reform issue and focuses, in what should be a benefit-cost analysis, almost exclusively on costs,” Holtz-Eakin said.

The Libertarian-leaning Cato Institute also made experts available to criticize the study, which it derided ahead of time as “fatally flawed.” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who’s taking an increasingly visible role backing immigration legislation, weighed in with a statement saying, “The Congressional Budget Office has found that fixing our broken immigration system could help our economy grow. A proper accounting of immigration reform should take into account these dynamic effects.”

Authors of the immigration bill, which was introduced last month by a group of four Republican and four Democratic senators, are waiting to get an official estimate of the costs of the bill from the Congressional Budget Office. They have pledged it will not cost the government money, partly because the bill puts immigrants who have been in the country illegally in a provisional legal status for 10 years during which they can’t get government benefits. The CBO typically measures costs of bills over a 10-year period.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Local News

A firefighter stands in silence before a panel bearing the names of L. John Regelbrugge and Kris Regelbrugge during the ten-year remembrance of the Oso landslide on Friday, March 22, 2024, at the Oso Landslide Memorial in Oso, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
‘Flood of emotions’ as Oso Landslide Memorial opens on 10th anniversary

Friends, family and first responders held a moment of silence at 10:37 a.m. at the new 2-acre memorial off Highway 530.

Julie Petersen poses for a photo with images of her sister Christina Jefferds and Jefferds’ grand daughter Sanoah Violet Huestis next to a memorial for Sanoah at her home on March 20, 2024 in Arlington, Washington. Peterson wears her sister’s favorite color and one of her bangles. (Annie Barker / The Herald)
‘It just all came down’: An oral history of the Oso mudslide

Ten years later, The Daily Herald spoke with dozens of people — first responders, family, survivors — touched by the deadliest slide in U.S. history.

Victims of the Oso mudslide on March 22, 2014. (Courtesy photos)
Remembering the 43 lives lost in the Oso mudslide

The slide wiped out a neighborhood along Highway 530 in 2014. “Even though you feel like you’re alone in your grief, you’re really not.”

Director Lucia Schmit, right, and Deputy Director Dara Salmon inside the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management on Friday, March 8, 2024, in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
How Oso slide changed local emergency response ‘on virtually every level’

“In a decade, we have just really, really advanced,” through hard-earned lessons applied to the pandemic, floods and opioids.

Ron and Gail Thompson at their home on Monday, March 4, 2024 in Oso, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
In shadow of scarred Oso hillside, mudslide’s wounds still feel fresh

Locals reflected on living with grief and finding meaning in the wake of a catastrophe “nothing like you can ever imagine” in 2014.

Rep. Suzan DelBene, left, introduces Xichitl Torres Small, center, Undersecretary for Rural Development with the U.S. Department of Agriculture during a talk at Thomas Family Farms on Monday, April 3, 2023, in Snohomish, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Under new federal program, Washingtonians can file taxes for free

At a press conference Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene called the Direct File program safe, easy and secure.

Former Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy Jeremie Zeller appears in court for sentencing on multiple counts of misdemeanor theft Wednesday, March 27, 2024, at Snohomish County Superior Court in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Ex-sheriff’s deputy sentenced to 1 week of jail time for hardware theft

Jeremie Zeller, 47, stole merchandise from Home Depot in south Everett, where he worked overtime as a security guard.

Everett
11 months later, Lake Stevens man charged in fatal Casino Road shooting

Malik Fulson is accused of shooting Joseph Haderlie to death in the parking lot at the Crystal Springs Apartments last April.

T.J. Peters testifies during the murder trial of Alan Dean at the Snohomish County Courthouse on Tuesday, March 26, 2024 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Bothell cold case trial now in jury’s hands

In court this week, the ex-boyfriend of Melissa Lee denied any role in her death. The defendant, Alan Dean, didn’t testify.

A speed camera facing west along 220th Street Southwest on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023 in Edmonds, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
New Washington law will allow traffic cams on more city, county roads

The move, led by a Snohomish County Democrat, comes as roadway deaths in the state have hit historic highs.

Mrs. Hildenbrand runs through a spelling exercise with her first grade class on the classroom’s Boxlight interactive display board funded by a pervious tech levy on Tuesday, March 19, 2024 in Marysville, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Lakewood School District’s new levy pitch: This time, it won’t raise taxes

After two levies failed, the district went back to the drawing board, with one levy that would increase taxes and another that would not.

Alex Hanson looks over sections of the Herald and sets the ink on Wednesday, March 30, 2022 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Black Press, publisher of Everett’s Daily Herald, is sold

The new owners include two Canadian private investment firms and a media company based in the southern United States.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.