Speaker. even before this conference report has been adopted. we are seeing pieces of the implementing package which might indeed be considered unfair. Many Members supported the budget agreement because it promised to right a wrong that had been part of the welfare reform legislation enacted in the last Congress. I am referring. of course. to the removal of thousands of elderly disabled legal immigrants from the SSI program. This House agreed during the consideration of the supplemental appropriation to provide funding to keep disabled elderly legal immigrants on the rolls until the Congress had an opportunity to revisit the issue and correct what is an unjustifiable inequity. Yet. Mr. Speaker. the Republican majority is now offering the House what can only be called a baitandswitch deal. This budget agreement came about as a result of long and difficult negotiations between the administration and the Republican leadership. Democrats in the House were subsequently assured that the agreement ensured that disabled elderly legal immigrants would be protected as part of those negotiations. Mr. Speaker. how is it. then. that the Republican majority is now proposing to fulfill perhaps only a part of that agreement? 0l 1245 The Committee on Ways and Means now has pending before it a proposal which will fulfill at least that part of the agreement that might save the Republican majority a major public and political embarrassment. To avoid what would surely create a public furor the Republicans have agreed that they will not kick those elderly disabled illegal immigrants who currently receive SSI off the roles. Thus the Republicans will ensure that they will not be blamed for kicking sick old people out of their nursing home beds and onto the streets. But.
Keywords matched
illegal immigrants immigrants