Obama is throwing her considerable political capital into this year's contentious midterm election cycle -- which could see Republicans retake the majority and bring Biden's agenda to a screeching halt
Former First Lady Michelle Obama is wading into the contentious waters of the 2022 midterm election cycle, urging her fellow Democrats to 'vote like the future of our democracy depends on it' in an open letter published Sunday.
The popular presidential spouse took out a full-page ad in the New York Times via her progressive group When We All Vote where she called on supporters to ramp up pressure on Congress to pass federal voting rights laws.
She also personally signed off on an action plan to 'recruit and train' thousands of volunteers to register voting-age Americans ahead of November's races.
'We’ve got to vote like the future of our democracy depends on it. And we must give Congress no choice but to act decisively to protect the right to vote and make the ballot box more accessible for everyone,' Obama wrote.
She opened the letter condemning last year's attack on the US Capitol, when violent Trump supporters attempted to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's electoral victory, before taking aim at GOP-controlled states that have passed voting security laws.
'One year ago, we witnessed an unprecedented assault on our Capitol and our democracy. From Georgia and Florida to Iowa and Texas, states passed laws designed to make it harder for Americans to vote. And in other state legislatures across the nation, lawmakers have attempted to do the same,' Obama wrote.
The former first lady compared today's partisan battle over the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to past civil rights struggles, including those fought by the eponymous late lawmaker himself.
'This type of voter suppression is not new. Generations of Americans have persevered through poll taxes, literacy tests, and laws designed to strip away their power—and they’ve done it by organizing, by protesting, and most importantly, by overcoming the barriers in front of them in order to vote. And now, we’ve got to do the same.'
The message, published in the New York Times on Sunday as an advertisement, was signed off by 30 civil rights and voting rights groups
She later added, 'As John Lewis said, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act.” And protecting it requires all of us. That’s why his generation organized, marched, and died to defend the very rights that are under attack today.'
To defend those rights, Obama laid out five goals to complete ahead of the elections that could see Republicans regain control of Congress and bring Biden's agenda to a screeching halt.
'Recruit and train at least 100,000 volunteers throughout 2022 to register and turn out voters in their communities,' the first goal reads.
The other measures include registering one million new voters, organizing 100,000 volunteers to push their senators on voting rights legislation and recruiting 'thousands of lawyers' in all 50 states to combat attempts to curb who can vote.
The letter also commits to educating Americans on how to 'vote safely.'
Thirty organizations including Stacey Abrams' Fair Fight Action, LeBron James' More Than A Vote and the NAACP signed on to Obama's message.
It comes as Democrats' chances of holding on to their slim majority in Congress continue to wane.
The Senate is currently split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote eking out a small edge for Democrats.
House Democrats have a slightly wider majority with 221 in their caucus compared to 212 Republicans.
But so far 25 Democrats have announced their departures at the end of 2022, while just 12 GOP lawmakers have done the same.
Americans gather at Congress' prayer vigil marking one year since January 6. Obama also tied the Capitol riot to voting rights in her Sunday letter
The vigil was open to members of the public, many of whom showed up with signs urging Congress to do more for voting rights in light of the attack on democracy
Schumer: Dems will fight 'entirely partisan' GOP voter restrictions
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Recent polls have also indicated public opinion is shifting away from Obama's party.
In an aggregation of generic ballot polls asking voters whether they'd prefer a Republican or Democrat to represent them in Congress, the GOP holds a small edge.
About 42.4 percent of people in FiveThirtyEight's 2022 poll aggregator prefer Republicans to control Congress, while 41.9 percent of respondents chose Democrats.
Meanwhile at least 19 states passed a sum total of 34 election security laws i n 2021, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
More than 440 bills with provisions that restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states in the 2021 state legislative sessions, its monthly report notes.
Democrats and left-wing activists accuse Republicans of passing provisions like requiring ID and proof of citizenship to vote in order to make it harder for minority and low-income voters who typically vote Democrat to cast ballots.
This year the GOP has also targeted efforts to expand mail-in voting. Unprecedented expansions to casting ballots by mail were introduced to allow Americans to vote safely during the coronavirus pandemic.
A majority of mail-in ballots in the 2020 presidential election went to Biden.
State and Local Politicians Move to Grant Coronavirus Relief to Illegal Aliens
By Matthew Tragesser
ImmigrationReform.com
https://www.immigrationreform.com/2020/04/08/illegal-alien-benefits-states-immigrationreform-com/
Study: More than 7-in-10 California Immigrant
Welfare
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/12/04/study-more-than-7-in-10-california-immigrant-households-are-on-welfare/
More than 7-in-10 households headed by immigrants in the state of California are on taxpayer-funded welfare, a new study reveals.
The latest Census Bureau data analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that about 72 percent of households headed by noncitizens and immigrants use one or more forms of taxpayer-funded welfare programs in California — the number one immigrant-receiving state in the U.S.
Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of households headed by native-born Americans use welfare in California.
All four states with the largest foreign-born populations, including California, have extremely high use of welfare by immigrant households. In Texas, for example, nearly 70 percent of households headed by immigrants use taxpayer-funded welfare. Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of native-born households in Texas are on welfare.
In New York and Florida, a majority of households headed by immigrants and noncitizens are on welfare. Overall, about 63 percent of immigrant households use welfare while only 35 percent of native-born households use welfare.
President Trump’s administration is looking to soon implement a policy that protects American taxpayers’ dollars from funding the mass importation of welfare-dependent foreign nationals by enforcing a “public charge” rule whereby legal immigrants would be less likely to secure a permanent residency in the U.S. if they have used any forms of welfare in the past, including using Obamacare, food stamps, and public housing.
The immigration controls would be a boon for American taxpayers in the form of an annual $57.4 billion tax cut — the amount taxpayers spend every year on paying for the welfare, crime, and schooling costs of the country’s mass importation of 1.5 million new, mostly low-skilled legal immigrants.
As Breitbart News reported, the majority of the more than 1.5 million foreign nationals entering the country every year use about 57 percent more food stamps than the average native-born American household. Overall, immigrant households consume 33 percent more cash welfare than American citizen households and 44 percent more in Medicaid dollars. This straining of public services by a booming 44 million foreign-born population translates to the average immigrant household costing American taxpayers $6,234 in federal welfare.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Study: Amnesty Will Cost ‘Hundreds of Billions’
NEIL MUNRO
President Joe Biden’s amnesty plan will spike Social Security spending by “hundreds of billions” over the next few decades, according to a forecast by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
The February 22 report, titled “Amnesty Would Cost the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds Hundreds of Billions of Dollars,” says:
The new taxes paid by the average amnesty recipient amount to only half of the $94,500 noted above. The net effect of amnesty is therefore $140,330 [in Social Security benefits] minus $47,250 [in paid taxes], which is about $93,000 per recipient. In any large-scale amnesty, in which millions of illegal immigrants gain legal status, it is easy to see how the net cost could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
The predicted $93,000 per person cost would be a financial burden for taxpayers — but would be a giveaway to business groups because the Social Security payments will be converted into purchases of consumer products, healthcare services, medical drugs, apartments, and food.
At least 11 million people — perhaps 20 million — are living illegally in the United States. The number rises as people overstay their visas, evade deportation orders, or sneak over the border — but it also falls as some migrants get deported, leave, or find ways to get green cards via the rolling “Adjustment of Status” process.
But taxpayers’ expenses are also economic gains for business groups and investors. In January 2020, a coalition of business groups sued deputies for President Donald Trump after he reduced the inflow of poor migrants into the U.S. consumer market, saying:
Because [green-card applicants] will receive fewer public benefits under the Rule, they will cut back their consumption of goods and services, depressing demand throughout the economy …
The New American Economy Research Fund calculates that, on top of the $48 billion in income that is earned by individuals who will be affected by the Rule—and that will likely be removed from the U.S. economy—the Rule will cause an indirect economic loss of more than $33.9 billion … Indeed, the Fiscal Policy Institute has estimated that the decrease in SNAP and Medicaid enrollment under the Rule could, by itself, lead to economic ripple effects of anywhere between $14.5 and $33.8 billion, with between approximately 100,000 and 230,000 jobs lost … Health centers alone would be forced to drop as many as 6,100 full-time medical staff.
CIS promised a more detailed report:
This is just a rough estimate. We are currently working on a detailed model that will provide more precise costs for both Social Security and Medicare. Again, however, any reasonable calculation will produce a large cost, simply because amnesty will convert so many outside contributors into actual beneficiaries.
For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and to the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.
The multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, intra-Democratic, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory — despite the media magnification of many skewed polls and articles that still push the 1950’s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim.
The deep public opposition is built on the widespread recognition that migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.
However, Biden’s officials have been broadcasting their desire to change border policies to help extract more migrants from Central America for the U.S. economy. On February 19, for example, deputies of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas posted a tweet offering support to migrants illegally working in the United States and to migrants who may wish to live in the United States.
We'll get 1 million-plus Biden migrants this year, warns ex-Obama/DHS official now at Harvard.
The warning includes a weak criticism of the ethnic lobbies & open-borders progressives who are undermining an Ivy League giveaway in the amnesty bill.#H1B https://t.co/RqZBEGcxKO
— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) February 22, 2021
Biden’s HHS Nominee Does Not Rule Out Taxpayer-Funded Healthcare for Illegal Aliens
JOHN BINDER
President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, dodged a question on whether he would push to provide American taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits to illegal aliens.
This week, during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Becerra was asked by Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) about his previous support for decriminalizing illegal immigration and providing illegal aliens with taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits.
Becerra, though, dodged the question by saying he would follow the parameters of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, which he said allows “very rare” cases of illegal aliens to receive benefits.
The exchange went as follows:
DAINES: You’re on record for pushing for allowing illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded healthcare and for decriminalizing illegal entry into the United States. This coupled with President Biden’s radical plan for granting citizenship to those who are here illegally would potentially lead to hundreds of thousands, if not potentially millions, more people flooding into our country. [Emphasis added]
As you know, in 2016, California passed a law requiring covered Californians to apply for … waivers to allow illegal immigrants to purchase health insurance in the marketplace. This waiver was withdrawn after President Trump’s election. [Emphasis added]
My question is this: Will you attempt to use the waiver authority contained in the Affordable Care Act to grant healthcare benefits to illegal immigrants? [Emphasis added]
BECERRA: Senator, I can tell you that where the law, as it stands now as I see it, it does not allow those who are unauthorized in this country to receive taxpayer-paid benefits except in very rare circumstances and it will be my job to make sure that we are following and enforcing the law. And I can commit to you that that is what we will do. [Emphasis added]
In a letter to Biden, 11 Senate Republicans and 64 House Republicans asked the president to withdraw Becerra’s nomination to be HHS Secretary, citing his support for taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits for illegal aliens, among other issues.
“Mr. Becerra seeks to decriminalize illegal immigration, which would extend expensive government benefits like Medicaid to anyone who illegally crosses our borders,” the letter states.
A Politico report this week suggested Becerra is eyeing plans to provide illegal aliens with taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits should he lead HHS.
“He’s one of those individuals that had exceedingly deep convictions about the need to cover the undocumented individuals in all of our communities,” former Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-TX) told Politico of Becerra.
Should Becerra become HHS Secretary, he could let illegal aliens onto Obamacare exchanges while pressuring states to pursue similar policies to those in California. Likewise, Becerra could open Obamacare exchanges to particular subgroups of illegal aliens, like those enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
As Breitbart News reported, forcing taxpayers to provide healthcare to all illegal aliens would cost citizens anywhere between $23 billion to $66 billion every single year — potentially a $660 billion bill for taxpayers every decade, without adjusting for inflation and the increasing number of illegal aliens.
Cost is only the first issue facing taxpayers. Medical experts have admitted providing healthcare to illegal aliens would ensure a never-ending flood of illegal aliens arriving at the southern border with “serious health problems” and local hospitals would have to cover the costs.
Already, taxpayers are forced to subsidize about $18.5 billion of yearly medical costs for illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.
When U.S. voters were polled by CNN on the issue in July 2019, nearly 6-in-10 said they were opposed to such a policy, including 63 percent of swing voters and 61 percent of self-described “moderates.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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