Speech #980137153

So was that a net savings of $30 million to the American taxpayer? Not at all. because Mr. WRIGHT. the distinguished majority leader. decided that on the other end of immigration we have a number of school districts that must educate children who are here illegally. that is. children who were not born in this country. who came here illegally with their parents. Now. it does not seem to ever come to the mind of the majority leader as he lambastes the President for deficit spending that the President gave us an opportunity to save $30 million. and. instead of saving it. we then transferred it to a new program. a program that was never authorized. has never come to the scrutiny of authorizing committees. and has never been subjected to real serious debate in both Houses. As a matter of fact. the one argument that was made for supporting it is that originally the proposal of the gentleman from Texas was for $145 million and we brought it down to $30 million. There has been no evidence whatsoever what it should cost or would cost and how it would affect any district in this country. I have spoken to some Members from the State that the gentleman from Texas comes from. and I suggested to them that from studying the problem of illegal immigrants. I believe most of the people who are here illegally that are of job age are working and. therefore. contributing to the economy. and they agree with me. Then I ask. "So what is the shortfall for your school districts?" They say. "Well. in our particular State of Texas. we dont have an income tax. and many of these people dont own property"-of course. they do not talk about the contributions that would come through rent receipts. and so forth-"but because we have decided as a State not to have an income tax which would be contributed to by those who are here illegally and working. we then want the people from the entire rest of the country to pay for it through some program which we are not even going to authorize." That is a specific example of where Congress is responsible for starting a very new program that has never been properly authorized and taking money the President suggested could be saved and not putting it in the area where he suggested it could be saved but transferring it into an entirely new program.