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Both Sides Agree That Border Bill Would Keep Invasion Going

By Joe Guzzardi

An Associated Press story that three of its leading reporters contributed to is a grand example of journalists not seeing the forest for the trees. Colleen Long, Zeke Miller, and Seung Min Kim, whose titles respectively are White House law enforcement and legal affairs correspondent, chief White House correspondent, and White House reporter, teamed up to write “Biden Determined to Use Stunning Trump-backed Collapse of Border Deal as a Weapon in 2024 Campaign.”

The story’s gist about the collapsed Senate border deal does not address the most crucial point: would the bill fulfill its stated purpose of securing the border? While President Joe Biden moved forward on his never-ending quest to seek additional funding for Ukraine, he gambled that as part of the same package he could satisfy Americans’ demand that he secures the U.S.-Mexico border. In his press release, Biden wrote that the bill “includes the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades. I strongly support it. It will make our country safer, make our border more secure….”

Naturally, Biden’s take away would be positive. The deal was negotiated by two Democrats, Arizona’s faux Independent Kyrsten Sinema who caucuses with Democrats, deep blue Connecticut’s Chris Murphy, and one Republican sacrificial lamb, Oklahoma’s James Lankford, whose home state is safely six hundred miles away from Eagle Pass, the landing point for thousands of arriving illegal aliens. A more appropriate choice to join the negotiating team would have been Texas’ Ted Cruz or Florida’s Marco Rubio whose constituents are under siege. The bill had input from impeached Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), two Biden confidants. In his 35 years in Congress, Schumer has unfailingly voted against border and interior enforcement as well as in favor of more liberal asylum standards and increased annual refugee ceilings.

Critics, including former President Donald Trump, insisted that the bill was hurtful for the homeland, and did nothing to secure the border, but instead assured that illegal crossings would persist, and that many illegal aliens would continue to get affirmative benefits. At a rally in Nevada, after solidifying his position as the far and away GOP front-runner, Trump made his feelings known. “As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible open border betrayal of America. I’ll fight it all the way.” Then he added, “A lot of the senators are trying to say, respectfully, they’re blaming it on me. I say, that’s OK. Please blame it on me. Please.” Trump’s statement provided Biden with the fodder he intends to use during the intense summer campaigning months. Again, Trump’s position, like Biden’s, is predictable. He knows that immigration is voters’ top concern, and his statement plays to his base.

The bill cannot be both “the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades,” and “an open borders betrayal of America.” AP should have focused on Biden and Trump’s disparate views on the immigration bill, S. Amdt.1388 to H.R. 815, and delved into whether the bill is bad, as the former president claimed, or whether the incumbent is on solid footing when he insisted that the bill provided the solution to the border crisis. Digging into the bill’s weeds would be challenging for AP since the senators’ proposed four hundred-pages long legislation was written with typical congressional obfuscation. Immigration law is tough for laymen to grasp, especially four hundred pages of it.

AP missed an opportunity to reach out to legal experts to help answer the straightforward question: is the Senate bill good or bad for the nation? Nolan Rappaport, a Democrat who opines in “The Hill” has excellent credentials. For three years, Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert and subsequently served a four-year period as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims. Before working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years. Rappaport’s summary of the amendment was concise: “the Border Act would not secure the border. Among other weaknesses, it fails to provide a solution to the most serious problem, which is that Biden has released so many asylum seekers into the country that our asylum system has broken.”

Another professional legal opinion came from the Center for Immigration Studies’ Andrew Arthur whose 20 year-plus career includes a period as Counsel on the House Judiciary Committee where he performed oversight of immigration issues. After five years at the House Judiciary, he was appointed to the immigration bench, serving for eight years as an Immigration Judge. Arthur reached the same conclusion as Rappaport: “the bill fails to close the vast majority of loopholes smugglers have been exploiting for a decade to move illegal migrants (and migrant families and children, in particular) into the United States. Worse, it codifies some of them.” Among the loopholes Arthur referred to were “the low “credible fear” standard for border migrants seeking asylum.” 

In short, the amendment would legalize border chaos by allowing up to 5,000 illegal entries per day, potentially 1.85 million illegal aliens annually, before border closure is required. The border closure guidelines are time-limited, however, and the untrustworthy Biden and Mayorkas have the discretion to determine how and when to use the authority provided. Biden does not need legislative action to close the border, and the administration’s support of the bill, which the Senate rejected, is an open admission of its failures. The proposed cap of 5,000 illegal entries per day proves that Biden could close the border to illegal aliens in an instant if he had the will to do it. The border solution that Americans want is to enforce existing immigration laws; no new legislation required.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Both Sides Agree That Border Bill Would Keep Invasion Going

Five Pinocchios for Gavin Newsom

By Joe Guzzardi

Add California Governor Gavin Newsom’s name to the list of prominent elected officials who blatantly lied about their personal histories. Senator Elizabeth Warren lied for years about her alleged American Indian heritage. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal falsely claimed to have been a Vietnam war combatant. Instead of slinking silently away under the cover of darkness, Warren and Blumenthal shrugged their lies off and successfully campaigned for re-election. Warren first identified as an American Indian in the 1980s and listed under race on her State Bar of Texas registration form as American Indian. In her 2019 presidential bid, voters disregarded Warren’s brazen misrepresentation; 49 percent polled said they considered decades of lying about her heritage didn’t matter. In her telephone call to the Cherokee Nation’s principal leader Bill John Baker, Warren apologized, then went about her Senate career unscarred.

Blumenthal claimed to have served in Vietnam, a falsehood that the New York Times exposed. Truth be told, Blumenthal never went to Vietnam. Instead, he obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war. Blumenthal claimed that he “misspoke” about Vietnam, but he nevertheless has been elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, 2016, and 2022.

Although not as outrageous as Warren’s and Blumenthal’s lies, Newsom’s whopper is notable, and an effort to enhance his shadow presidential campaign. As Newsom tells the story, he was headed to a community college until Santa Clara University’s baseball coaches phoned with a partial scholarship offer which, he said, “changed my life, my trajectory”. But former coaches and teammates countered that Newsom’s baseball biography, repeated again and again through interviews and glossy magazine profiles and coverage of his 2021 baseball-themed children’s book on overcoming dyslexia, inflated his baseball credentials, and gave the impression that he was a more accomplished player than he was.

A junior varsity recruit who played only during the fall tryouts in his freshman and sophomore years, Newsom left the baseball program before the regular season began without ever playing an official game for the Broncos, an NCAA Division-1 school. Newsom does not appear on the Broncos’ all-time roster or in media guides published by the athletic department.

Rumors persist that the Democratic National Party is plotting to dump Biden and his miserable poll ratings. Newsom waits anxiously in the wings. But from a national voters’ perspective Newsom’s curriculum vitae makes him increasingly unelectable. Should Newsom ever reach the campaign trail, he’d be on the defensive from the get-go. California has amassed an enormous $73 billion deficit, in large part because the dysfunctional state has driven taxpayers away. The non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) in its February update added $15 billion to its original $58 billion budget current deficit projection. The massive, mounting debt coincides with the large numbers of fleeing taxpayers, one of California’s primary sources of revenue. Census data shows that California’s population dropped by about 75,400 between July 2022 and July 2023. Many of the people leaving California are taking significant resources with them. California experienced a net loss of more than 27,000 tax filers with an adjusted gross income of over $200,000 between 2020 and 2021, according to the Tax Foundation. The state’s budget deficit is more stunning when compared to 2022’s $97.5 billion surplus which quickly morphed into a $31 billion-plus deficit.

Newsom will push more Californians out of the-once Golden State if the legislature approves his energy bill plan. California lawmakers propose to change the way electricity is billed to households, part of Newsom’s tax the rich scheme. Instead of paying for the electricity consumption a household uses, the home will also be billed based on its income. A draft of the new law requires that people earning $28,000-$69,000 be charged an extra $20 to $34 per month. Those earning $69,000-$180,000 would pay $51 to $73 per month, and people earning more than $180,000 would pay a $85-to-$128 monthly surcharge. California has one of the nation’s highest costs of living and ranks third in highest residential energy costs. Residents making $28,000 annually are struggling financially, especially if they’re supporting large families, and cannot afford an energy surtax. They too may soon be heading for the highway. The California Public Utilities Commission has until July 1 to implement the new rule into the billing process.

A stumping Newsom would meet strong headwinds on his immigration agenda, national voters’ biggest concerns. Newsom’s welcoming immigration laws will make it impossible for him to pose as an enforcement advocate. His latest affront: effective January 1, 2024, all illegal aliens, regardless of age, will qualify for Medi-Cal, California’s version of the federal Medicaid program for low-income individuals. Newsom estimates conservatively that 764,000 illegal aliens will enroll, exacerbating the already strained Medi-Cal system that provides for 14.6 million Californians, about a third of the state’s population. An LAO estimate calculated that providing Medi-Cal to California’s illegal alien population would cost the state over $6.5 billion annually, a tough pill for taxpayers to swallow when the budget is $73 billion in the red. For the DNC, pushing Biden aside to make room for the potentially less electable Newsom would be a roll of the dice. The party is better off with the devil it knows, Biden, than to gamble on the duplicitous Newsom.

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Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Five Pinocchios for Gavin Newsom Five Pinocchios for Gavin Newsom