Free Republic

The budget reconciliation package pushed by Democrats creates a new expanded child tax credit (CTC) that would pay illegal immigrants some $10.5 billion next year. All immigrants with children are eligible, regardless of how they got here and whether their children are U.S.-born. This includes the roughly 600,000 unaccompanied minors and persons in family units stopped at the border in FY2021 and released into the country pending a hearing. Cash welfare to illegal immigrants is not just costly; it also encourages more illegal immigration. Although it is referred to as a “refundable credit,” the new CTC, like the old additional...

Much media attention has been paid to the efforts of Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to defund what has now been dubbed the “ObamaCare Slush Fund”, which is the $105 billion that Rep. Bachmann claims is hidden in the text of the Affordable Care Act. While many have jumped on board in debunking this stat, King and Bachmann are pressing forward in trying to eliminate this “fund,” introducing amendments on the House floor that would zero out this $105 billion. Republican leadership is not supporting them in their quest, however. According to a top aide for...

Thanks to the irrepressible Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who is emerging as the most energetic and principled conservative leader of the 112th Congress, the Congressional Research Service published a report on Feb. 10 detailing how the Obama administration is planning to spend $105.5 billion that was put on an appropriations autopilot in the health care legislation the Democrat-majority Congress enacted last year. Unless the Republican-controlled House in this Congress can force President Obama to sign new legislation forbidding dispersal of this $105.5 billion, the administration will spend it to lay the basic foundations for a socialistic health care system in...

GOTCHA government is profoundly unAmerican, but it’s what we get from the Obama Administration and the previous Congress that, it turns out, rigged the health reform law to deny the will of the people. The current Congress must act to un-do this heinous feature of the massive health reform bill that has come to light only recently.This past week, the conservative Heritage Foundation highlighted this scam recently uncovered by the Congressional Research Service. Here’s the dirty doing: Hidden quietly inside the 2,700-page bulk of the health reform bill, unspoken and unknown to virtually all of Congress was a stash of...

Today former Congressman Ernest Istook testified before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee about the $105 billion slush fund in advance appropriations liberals tucked inside Obamacare. The $105 billion bypasses the traditional yearly budgeting process and is spread throughout the 2,700 page legislation. It took the Congressional Research Service (CRS) seven months to identify all the disparate funds and it was not until February (11 months after the bill passed) that all of the funds could be totaled up. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has been beating the drum to raise awareness of this unprecedented level of advance spending. But...