Levin: Boehner, Cantor, Ryan Expanding Welfare State by Pushing Amnesty

Radio’s Mark Levin on Friday evening excoriated House GOP leadership, particularly House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, for their immigration policies that will end up aiding an increased welfare state.

We’ve talked about Obama and his economic record, which is worse than Jimmy Carter’s. Now, what are we going to do about it in this country? They have a new idea. In addition to increasing unemployment compensation, or I should say extending, in addition to more food stamps and more disability insurance–in other words, expand the welfare side of the state rather than the productive side of the state–the Republicans have a ‘great idea’: amnesty. If we make illegal workers legal, and of course we don’t really secure the border wink wink, we just say we will at some point in the future–that’s been going on for about 30 years now–and word gets back home in that country or that country over there and the other country over there and of course it encourages more illegal aliens to come into our country. What happens then, to the workforce, ladies and gentlemen? Well here’s the deal: They like to talk about increasing the minimum wage on the left and unemployment insurance and ‘protecting the workers’ and benefits and healthcare and all the rest. Yet not only do their statist, Marxist policies undermine all of that, because they destroy the heartland, or I should say the core, of our industrial nation, but when you import people into this country with incentives, without enforcing the law, migration and what have you, many of whom are illiterate as I say over and over again in their own language, or low-skilled or unskilled, you drive down wages. The same people who are pushing this are pushing an increase in minimum wage and the rest of the welfare state. But the Republicans are in on it too.

Levin said he thinks it’s a “mistake to say the Republicans really think they can get these illegal aliens” to vote for them if they’re granted amnesty and eventually citizenship. “The vast majority of them will not,” Levin claimed. “If they can’t read the Constitution of their home country, how are they going to read ours? It’s much easier to say you have a right to this, you have a right to that. Well the question is this: What are the Republicans going to do about it? The Republicans are going to support amnesty.” 

“Now what I was saying was, no, the Republicans are not going to get a majority of this vote. There’s no evidence to support that whatsoever,” he continued. “Even when the Bushies and the other RINOs point to Bush’s one year ‘oh he got 44 percent,’ it’s not true. He got 40 percent by most estimations. The fact of the matter is you can get 40 percent all the time but last time I checked that’s not a majority.”

Levin claimed he has sources who inform him that Boehner, his “McCain staffer” aide Rebecca Tallent, Cantor, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, and Ryan are “finalizing these so-called ‘principles'” on immigration soon. Levin said those GOP leaders plan to attempt to force the House GOP conference to support their plan, similarly to how Ryan got House Republicans to support his budget deal with Senate Budget Committee chairwoman Patty Murray. 

“They’re finalizing these principles of their immigration plan without input from the rank and file and the rank and file will forced to go along, just like they did with the budget just a few weeks ago,” Levin said. “Remember? ‘This is our budget, man, and we’re going with it, and anybody who criticizes it, you haven’t read it.’ Turns out, none of them read it, and they’re cutting benefits and pensions from combat veterans.”

Levin said the reason why Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce–which he called the “Chamber of Crony Capitalism”–support amnesty is not because they think it will help the GOP but because they want more money. “If you increase or legalize people who are here illegally, there’s really no reason for business to increase wages or benefits on their own–which is exactly why the U.S. Chamber of Crony Capitalism is pushing it,” Levin said. 

You and I and everybody else, we have to pay for these school systems and hospital systems and the infrastructure that’s affected by all of this, local law enforcement, state law enforcement. There is a price. But the U.S. Chamber of Crony Capitalism doesn’t give a damn. They’re not going to pay it. And if the supply of foreign workers were to be addressed, illegal foreign workers, what would business do? Well, they’d have to offer higher wages and more benefits and better working conditions and so forth. That’s how the free market system works. That’s how free enterprise works. But they don’t have to do any of those things if we import labor or we legalize labor that was imported illegally. The Republicans don’t expect to get a majority of this vote. That’s just tripe. That’s just propaganda. That’s just play-along. I talked about this the other day: What they really are about is the money. The Democrats know they’re going to get a majority of this vote. What the Republicans want are the massive contributions and the cozy jobs after they serve in Capitol Hill from the U.S. Chamber of Crony Capitalists and their affiliated members. That’s what they want. That’s what they’re about. I’m not kidding. And you can see it now.

Boehner’s motive, Levin accused, is because he wants a lobbying job when he leaves Congress sometime in the next few years. “I will bet somebody $1,000 today that when Boehner leaves his Speakership, he’s going to become a lobbyist,” Levin said. “If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. But I bet he is because I see him setting it all up right now just like Trent Lott.”

Levin said that U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue has vowed to take out any candidate for public office “who stands for the American citizen, who stands for the American taxpayer, any candidate who stands for legal immigration as opposed to this.”

Levin cited Milton Friedman to argue that a welfare state cannot have open borders. 

“Let me cite to you Milton Friedman, may I do that?” he asked his listeners. “He said it’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration in a welfare state. You can’t have free immigration in a welfare state. And our welfare state is massive, and getting bigger.

He also quoted former Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-MN), who ran for president in 1968 as a Democrat but later endorsed Ronald Reagan for president in 1980, as saying the United States “cannot regain its competitive standing in the world by importing low-wage workers from other countries.”

“On the other hand, it endangers conditions this country cannot and should not tolerate,” Levin said, while quoting McCarthy. “Furthermore, in the modern age, a nation’s wealth and prosperity are procured by high worker productivity and investment and not by the availability of low-wage labor.”

Levin agreed with McCarthy’s one-time assessment of how amnesty and importing large swaths of unskilled or low-skilled immigrants would hurt the United States, and specifically, American workers.

“We’re dumbing down our labor force,” Levin said. “All this talk about inequality? When you import poor people, illiterate people, not all, but too many, unskilled or low-skilled people from other countries, from the third world or from Europe or what have you, from the Middle East or Africa, when you do that, obviously that has an impact on the ‘disparity between the rich and the poor.'”