Last Friday, the U.S. Senate voted on a bill introduced by Sen. Rand Paul that would halt $5 billion in federal spending for welfare payments to non-citizens. It seems like a no-brainer that non-citizens should not receive these benefits. However, all the Democrats, along with 20 RINO senators, including both senators from Alaska, voted to continue making these benefit payments.
I am still trying to understand why there wasn’t unanimous support for Sen. Paul’s bill. It would seem obvious that a non-citizen shouldn’t be able to come to this country and receive money from our government when there are impoverished Americans who need help first.
Liberals will tell us that recent immigrants are barred from most welfare programs, but they really aren’t being honest. While there is a time limit on the prohibition of non-citizens receiving benefits, it doesn’t apply to non-citizen children. Also, some non-citizens can immediately receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children (Anchor babies) who are awarded U.S. citizenship and full welfare eligibility at birth.
Senator Sullivan will be forced to defend his support for this $5 billion government welfare program in the lead-up to November’s election.
According to the National Immigration Law Center, the benefits refugees are eligible to receive include SSI, SNAP, WIC, HUD Public Housing, Medicaid, CHIP, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). So many non-citizens take advantage of these programs that the Center for Immigration Studies says that 63% of non-citizen households receive some form of government assistance. Even worse, we know from the Somali daycare scandal that these government benefit programs are rife with fraud.
So, given all the waste in these programs for non-citizens, I am trying to figure out why our knucklehead senators want to spend another $5 billion in this way. It can’t be because we are running out of uneducated poor people in this country that we need to import more of them from overseas.
I am not surprised that Murkowski supported these programs. Despite being a Republican, she has a liberal worldview and, like all leftists, wants to solve problems with other people’s money. I don’t like her vote, but I half expected it.
Dan Sullivan is a little more difficult to understand. He at least pretends to be a conservative, but his support for this spending package is not something that a conservative Republican would do. Perhaps Senator Dan voted with the D’s because this is an election year, and he is afraid that Mary Peltola will criticize his support for President Trump. Maybe Sullivan made this vote as a price he paid to get Lisa Murkowski’s support for his re-election. Whatever the reason, Sullivan should have considered how this would be received back home.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
Forcing Alaskans to pay taxes to support unemployed non-citizen immigrants is a pretty hard sell. Non-citizen immigrants are a constituency that can’t even vote legally and should have no influence on Alaska’s senators.
Senator Sullivan will be forced to defend his support for this $5 billion government welfare program in the lead-up to November’s election. I am sure PACs supporting the Peltola campaign are already writing television ads about this, calling Senator Sullivan a sellout. When he debates Mary Peltola, she is sure to bring this up, and he had better start working on an explanation that he can deliver with a straight face.
As I said, there has to be something more to this. Can someone in the comments section please tell me why all the Democrats, and 20 of the RINO Republicans in the U.S. Senate would flagrantly waste the taxpayers’ money like this? Don’t they know it is going to anger the voters? It sure did for me.
The views expressed here are those of Greg Sarber. Read more Sarber posts at his Seward’s Folly substack.
