OPINION:
When President Obama promised six years ago that his administration would be the most transparent in history, Americans, weary of being misled and misinformed by their government, were eager to put aside their skepticism and believe him. Those innocent Americans have learned since to fear that Mr. Obama is trying to give away their future.
He assured everyone that his immigration reform would include neither amnesty nor expensive benefits that would have to be paid for by the rest of us. Even the Dream Act, established by executive order in 2012, did not entitle illegal immigrants to federally subsidized health care under the Affordable Care Act commonly called Obamacare.
However, now it turns out that up to 5 million illegals who are to become eligible for work permits under the president’s amnesty will pay into Social Security and Medicare and, accordingly, be entitled to collect benefits at retirement. In his nationally televised broadcast Nov. 20, defiantly announcing an amnesty without congressional sanction, the president omitted that important fact. Republicans are rightly upset by the president’s lack of candor and vow to find a way to disarm this magnet to attract a new wave of border crashers.
Democratic politicians and Washington policy wonks arguing over which year Social Security and Medicare are likely to go bust can now debate whether adding illegals to the entitlements will help or hurt the system. Vice President Joseph Biden wrote in support of the president’s plan last week at IrishCentral.com that “it would be an absolute game-changer for our economy, adding $1.4 trillion to our economy and reducing the deficit by nearly $850 billion over 20 years, and extending the solvency of Social Security by another two years.”
But hold on. Uncle Joe’s abuse of the English language raises doubts about his math as well. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation tells Breitbart News that the president’s amnesty would put the nation into an even deeper hole. “The net cost — which is total benefits minus total benefits paid in — of the amnesty recipients I estimate will be around $2 trillion over the course of their lifetime,” he says. Common sense says that more workers paying entitlement taxes mean more cash flowing into government coffers in the short term, but millions of retired immigrants will empty those coffers in the long term. Social Security has always been a variation of a Ponzi scheme, requiring ever more contributors to keep it afloat. Such schemes inevitably fail, which is why they’re illegal unless they’re operated by the government.
Moral obligations are hard to keep and harder to redeem once lost. Maintaining secure national boundaries is a moral obligation that Mr. Obama has chosen to ignore in his rush to transform America. The result is conflict between the needs of citizens and those of intruders, leading to tough choices that never should have come about. In preparing to hand out new benefits to a portion of the families that have sneaked into the country, Mr. Obama is laying the predicate for entitlements for millions of others not yet eligible. Honesty is another moral obligation, which is never an option for the president of the United States. Americans can put down Mr. Obama’s reassurance that amnesty won’t break the bank with the same promise that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”
The importance of honesty, such as in the Bible teaching that “the truth shall set you free,” flies over the president’s head, which seems stuffed with cotton, hay, straw and the Machiavellian principle that “the ends justify the means.” When the president says that’s the sun rising in the east, the wise will look for a compass.
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