“With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedy seat and it’s not the Democrats’ seat, it’s the people’s seat.”

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Their own words…

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Right off the bat, I notice that the word States is most-prominent, followed by President, State, United, then Congress. Looking at the HR3200 cloud shows the word Section as most-prominent, then Secretary, then Health. Makes one wonder what the emphasis is on?

The Senate draft legislation cloud has Health featured most, then Section and Secretary. Word-wise, it’s an improvement.

(Here is this word cloud on Wordle.)

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Andy McCarthy’s comments are correct:

Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t see how this helps the Left. If I were a Lefty and I could be cold-blooded about the whole thing, I’d probably think attaching Kennedy’s name was a bad idea. Even with his numbers tanking, Obama is still more personally popular with the country as a whole than Kennedy was, and he is unavoidably the guy the Left has to rely on. That makes him the only name that matters, regardless of what they call this thing.

Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

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If we continue to ignore the relationship of healthcare reform to every other proposed policy change that has been set before us, the President will continue to go about his business, unnoticed by a distracted American public, and soon he will launch a calculated assault on the wallets of an unsuspecting citizenry. We therefore cannot let ourselves become so ensconced in our debates over the morals of healthcare that we overlook the rest of his battle plan, which includes the costly destruction of our national integrity with new policies on illegal immigration. It is exceedingly important to keep our sights on the fact that the cost of subsidizing healthcare for illegal immigrants accounts for an enormous percentage of the cost of a socialized healthcare system. If we divert our attention from that fact, the current administration will establish a crushing economic burden on the tax-payers of this country. 

It’s axiomatic that the average voter is an uninformed voter. It follows that most voters have little or no knowledge of the numbers associated with immigration, thereby remaining blissfully ignorant of the most rudimentary information required to develop an informed opinion about either immigration or healthcare, much less the complex interrelationship between the two. Resistance to edification runs rampant among liberals in particular. It is fortified by delusions of moral superiority and their belief that generous government spending, by virtue of the noble purpose they think it serves, is far beyond the reproach of a number-crunching skeptic. Unencumbered by data and profoundly myopic, the idealists float lightly and blindly over the uncomfortable terrain of economics like sylphs, unwilling to accept the hard reality beneath their feet.

I wager that only a handful of people are aware of the scale at which our country is inundated with illegal immigrants each year. Even fewer are cognizant of the effects that these immigrants will have on population growth or the exponentially increasing economic burden they have on tax-payers.

The data most critical to an evaluation of proposed immigration policies and healthcare reform does exist and is readily accessible to anyone with the slightest interest in finding it. One has only to consult two obvious sources of information: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). I reproduce the most germane data here, which includes illegal immigration statistics, population growth, and the cost of healthcare for illegal immigrants under Obama’s planned healthcare reform. Please note that all of the data below were taken directly from the source except where noted.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: BASIC FACTS

The DHS estimates a net illegal immigration of 11.6 million people since 1980. To put that in perspective, there is 1 (one) illegal immigrant for every 26 legal citizens of the United States. (Additional note: DHS undercounts the illegal population by 10%, meaning that the number is closer to 12.76 million.)

• Illegal immigrants and their descendents will increase the population of the United States in the year 2050 by 85 million. That’s the equivalent of the entire population of Germany moving to the United States in the next 41 years. (per author)
• During the same time period (1980 – 2007), approximately 56% of the illegal immigrants entered the US while a Democrat was in office (Clinton). However, Clinton’s presidency accounts for only 30% of that time period. In contrast, only 44% of the total illegal immigration occurred while Republicans were in office for the remaining 70% of the time. Put another way, the ratio of Democrat-era illegal immigration versus Republican-era illegal immigration was 3:1. (per author)

 ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: HEALTHCARE COSTS

The following data can be found in the transcript of a CIS panel discussion entitled “The Elephant in the Room: Panel on Immigration’s Impact on Health Care Reform” (August 2009) by Steven A. Camarota, Robert Rector, Mark Krikorian, and James R. Edwards Jr.  CIS is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization.

The discussion centered around total immigration (illegal + legal), so I have adjusted the numbers to reflect the DHS’s recent estimates that 75% of all immigrants are now entering the country illegally.

• The cost of the new healthcare plan to tax-payers over the next decade, given current immigration policies, is estimated at $1.1 trillion, an average of $110 billion per year.
• Currently, tax-payers contribute $4 billion per year to pay for healthcare for illegal immigrants. If they were given Medicaid, it would cost us $15 billion per year.
• If the current population of illegal immigrants were given amnesty, the cost of their citizenship (e.g. social security, health care, and so forth) would be $2.5 trillion per year.
• The Joint Economic Committee (US Congress) looked at cost estimates done on several healthcare programs over the last 40 – 50 years. Their conclusion was that costs were underestimated by anywhere from 1.6 to 16 times. In other words, a  $1.1 trillion healthcare plan for illegal immigrants will in reality cost at best $1.76 trillion and at worst $17.6 trillion over a period of ten years, which translates to anywhere from $176 billion to $1.76 trillion per year.

 IN SUMMARY

The number of illegal immigrants who have arrived in the United States since 1980 is close to 12.75 million, and we are expected to subsidize their citizenship to the tune of $2.5 trillion per year under the new healthcare and immigration reforms. This figure does not include the costs associated with future immigration. Historically, the number of immigrants has increased dramatically while a Democrat was in office and it is projected to increase even more as immigrants flock to the U.S. to take advantage of our proposed new government programs.

Though there is of course merit in exploring the moral basis for providing universal healthcare to all persons on American soil, it is nevertheless critically important that we keep the numbers in plain view while doing so. We can not discuss one without the other. If we lose sight of the numbers, we will pay dearly for the President’s healthcare/immigration reform package, in more ways than one.

REFERENCES:

http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ois_ill_pe_2008.pdf

http://www.cis.org/Transcript/HealthCare-Immigration-Panel

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(click on the image to see it full-size)

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Voila! Below is the word cloud for the draft Kennedy-Dodd bill on health care reform. (It’s linked to the full-size image)

Here’s the House legislation as a word cloud.

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PARTICIPANT: So if we got your meetings to sixty forty, you’d vote…and there was single payer in a bill you would vote for it?

MASSA:  Oh absolutely I would vote for single payer.

PARTICIPANT: If there was sixty forty sentiment in the room?

MASSA: Listen, I tell every audience I’m in favor of single payer.

PARTICIPANT: If there was eighty twenty in the room?

MASSA: If there was a single payer bill?

PARTICIPANT: And there was a single payer….

MASSA:  I will vote for the single payer bill.

PARTICIPANT: Even if it meant you were being voted out of office?

MASSA: I will vote adamantly against the interests of my district if I actually think what I am doing is going to be helpful.

(inaudible participants’ comments regarding the “interests” of the district statement from Mr. Massa)

Massa: I will vote against their opinion if I actually believe it will help them.

Video of the exchange:

Corning mayor Tom Reed, who’s announced he’s running against Massa, needs to have that video playing 24-7 on his website, on tv ads, and the transcript in his mailers.

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