Illinois Republicans are a joke, grossly overestimating the cost to deport millions of illegals

Seen here:

Five Illinois Republican lawmakers are reviving the call for Congress to act on comprehensive immigration reform that includes provisions to expand visas for high skill, low skill and agricultural workers, and a path to citizenship for the undocumented population. At an immigration reform panel discussion sponsored by the Illinois Business Immigration Coalition (IBIC), Reps. Aaron Schock (R), Adam Kinzinger (R), Bob Dold (R), Sen. Mark Kirk (R) and Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) remarked that it was time to their colleagues in Congress to move on a comprehensive immigration bill.

“It’s naive to think that the 11 to 12 million people are going to disappear,” Schock said, citing a new right-leaning American Action Forum study, which reported that mass deportation of 11 million immigrants would cost the government anywhere between $400 billion and $600 billion. The study found that the impact on real gross domestic product would drop by about $1.6 trillion.

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As I've shown before (here) the cost to round up and deport 11 million illegals should run no more than $500 million per year. 

Republicans today just don't have any imagination like they did in the era of Eisenhower.

The American Action Forum, incidentally, is run by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, John McCain's economic advisor, and Norm Coleman, who was defeated for his Senate seat from Minnesota by a comedian.

Nebraska Wendy's Cuts Hours For 100 To Avoid ObamaCare

As reported here:

"A fast-food chain is slashing employee hours so franchise owners don't have to pay health benefits. Around 100 local Wendy’s workers have learned their hours are being cut. A spokesperson says a new health care law is to blame.

"The company has announced that all non-management positions will have their hours reduced to 28 a week."

Liberal hysteria at thinkprogress.org here inflates the reported number to 300:

"Not long after the owner of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster chains admitted their anti-Obamacare campaigns hurt more than helped, the owner of a Wendy’s franchise in Omaha, Nebraska plans to cut 300 employees’ hours to part-time to avoid providing them health care coverage."

How else do you miss that detail in both the first and last paragraphs of the story unless you didn't bother to read it?

Drudge Makes 'People for the American Way' Story Against Santorum Lead

Today.

The left had the story five days ago here, and later here.





Is Drudge's sin of "talking like the left" the same as Newt's attacking "capitalism" back around January 11?

Sen. Rick Santorum's Anti-Protestantism: They are 'Gone From Christianity'

As usual for the senator, the following is inarticulately stated, but nevertheless it is clear enough that Sen. Santorum operates under an anti-Protestant Catholicism which was more common in the past and which finds the short-comings of Protestantism's more liberal denominations too good to pass up.

Excerpted from remarks made in Florida in 2008, referenced here and here:

"We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it."


A bunch of us Protestants think the same thing, but that's another story.

Newt Gingrich Supported Government Compulsion on Healthcare in 2005

The left is all over it, here.

Capt. Terrell: "Doin' right ain't got no end."

Newt: "[W]e have no room in this society to have a free rider approach if you’re well off economically to say we’ll cheat our neighbors."