Rubio Pushes Back on Immigration Reform's Impact on Entitlements

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, a member of the so-called bipartisan “Gang of Eight” pushing immigration reform, disagrees with Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions’ staff’s analysis of immigration reform’s impact on the U.S. entitlement system.

The Senate Budget Committee Republican staff on Thursday released a report that it said shows the “Gang of Eight” immigration reform proposal, according to what has been publicly said about it thus far, would increase entitlement spending by trillions of dollars. That burden, of course, would be placed at the feet of the U.S. taxpayers.

In response to that report, Rubio spokesman Alex Conant told Breitbart News that it is impossible to accurately grade the complete cost of immigration reform until legislative text for the Gang of Eight proposal is introduced. 

“Since we don’t yet have a legislative proposal, it’s not possible to come up with anything resembling an accurate calculation about the potential fiscal impact of bipartisan immigration reform,” Conant said in an email Thursday afternoon.. “Obviously we share concerns about the potential fiscal impact of changes to our immigration system, which is why we will ask for an in-depth CBO analysis to inform debate around the bipartisan proposal. Senator Rubio has been clear that he will only support legislation that prohibits undocumented immigrants from receiving any Federal benefits, and in our negotiations, the Democrats have gone along with that demand – even agreeing to a partial repeal of Obamacare to bar undocumented immigrants benefits. In the long-term, there’s no question that modernizing our broken legal immigration will be very good for our nation’s economy.”

Some have said a legislative proposal may be presented as early as next week, though it is thus far unclear when the Gang will have the text written.