Today, Rep. Joe ‘You Lie’ Wilson (R-SC) staged a press conference with several other Republican congressmen during which Wilson and his colleagues repeatedly lied about taxpayers funding the health care coverage of 2.5 million additional undocumented immigrants under H.R. 3962.

WILSON: I am sorry to report that the Polosi take-over bill has loopholes in it which actually is even worse than H.R. 3200. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office [CBO], the number of illegal aliens who would benefit from receiving health care benefits in this country would increase by 2.5 million. From 6 million to 8.5 million people [undocumented immigrants] would be able to receive health care benefits. It would cost the American taxpayer 30.5 billion dollars for people who have illegally come to this country.

Watch it:

The CBO estimate actually doesn’t say anything about 2.5 million additional undocumented immigrants receiving health care benefits. What it does say is that about half of the 17 million non-elderly residents who would remain uninsured if H.R. 3200 passed would be “unauthorized immigrants” (8.5 million) and approximately one third of the 18 million who would remain uninsured under H.R. 3962 would be unauthorized (6 million). The CBO’s analysis does not reference the undocumented population other than to point out that the percentage of the uninsured population increases if undocumented immigrants are included in its estimates. There is no reference as to how many undocumented immigrants would be covered by the proposed health care bill because both CBO analyses were essentially written under the assumption that undocumented immigrants will not be eligible.

When it comes down to it, it’s hard to say how many undocumented immigrants would remain uninsured because there is so little information on the population. In a recent blog post, the CBO explained:

The use of the terms “about one-third” and “nearly half” was meant to convey the uncertainty and imprecision surrounding our estimates of the characteristics of the remaining uninsured population. Because of that uncertainty and imprecision, we cannot provide a specific figure for coverage of unauthorized immigrants under any of the proposals. Despite the difference in wording, we would not expect any significant differences between the two bills in the number of uninsured who are unauthorized immigrants, because the relevant features of the two proposals are similar.

The CBO does not discuss how many undocumented immigrants will be insured if health care reform passes, but it’s unlikely that their insurance will be tax-payer funded. Under both House bills, undocumented immigrants are permitted to participate in the health exchange and purchase insurance at full cost with their own money. They do not qualify for subsidies. Ultimately, most undocumented immigrants avoid interacting with the US government and it’s improbable that any large number will risk getting deported just to pay lower premiums. Wilson’s claim that undocumented immigrants will cost taxpayers $30.5 billion is either misinformed or downright deceitful.

The merged House bill requires US citizens to be verified against Social Security Administration data and non-citizens to be verified using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program which was designed to help benefit-granting agencies ensure that only entitled applicants receive benefits.

Dan Stein, President of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) joined Wilson. FAIR has been listed as an anti-immigrant hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2007.

The unrest and repression in Iran following the country’s controversial elections is reversing some of the regional political gains that the Islamic regime enjoyed over the past decade, according to a panel at the University of Maryland today.

Speaking at the symposium After the 2009 Elections: Domestic, Regional, and International Dimensions, Stanford University professor Abbas Milani said that that the Islamic Republic is currently dealing with “the most serious crisis in thirty years,” and “is more divided than it has ever been.” Milani said that “Two pillars of the regime” — Khamenei and Rafsanjani — “are at each others’ throats.” More importantly, Abbas said, not do people no longer believe in the regime, but many of the people “now believe that the regime is afraid of them.”

At the same time, according to Milani,”The international situation has never been as dangerous for [Iran] as it is now.” After significantly increasing its political reach and influence as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, post-election repression has caused the regime to lose legitimacy not only in the eyes of much of the international community, but also in the eyes of many Islamists throughout the Middle East who had previously looked to Iran as a standard bearer of resistance against the West.

Milani referred to a recent paper by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the seminal Islamist organization in the Middle East, which he said described the Brotherhood’s shifting view. “Before June 12,” Milani said, “the view among the Muslim Brotherhood was to support Iran against the West’s bullying.” But now “Brotherhood leaders are finding it more difficult to defend Iran.’

Groups like Hezbollah and Iraq’s Shia parties, Milani said, are also “hedging their bets, [and] are no longer assured that their future lies in an alliance with the Islamic Republic.

Assessing Iran’s appeal to the Arab Middle East, Panelist Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace quipped that “Iran is to the Middle East what Rush Limbaugh is to the US.” They appeal to “the alienated and downtrodden.” Iran’s “Death to America” propaganda resonates most “when people are outraged over U.S. and Israeli behavior”.

UMD’s Shibley Telhami noted the divergence between how Arab governments view Iran and how Arab publics view Iran. “Many Arab regimes are unpopular for their own corruption,” Telhami said “but also, in the case of Egypt and Jordan, because of the Israeli issue.” It is the continuing importance of the Israeli-Palestinian issue to their publics, and anger at regional governments for not having donw more to help the Palestinians, Telhami said, that compels states like Egypt and Jordan to hype the threat from Shiite Iran.

Iran’s loss of appeal could have negative short-term consequences for the region, however. Sadjadpour said that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps is now “essentially running Iranian foreign policy in the region, [while] the foereign ministry been sidelined.” Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaqi “is basically a spokesperson, [and] not deciding policy,” according to Sadjadpour.

The recent seizure by Israel of what Israel claims were Iranian arms headed for Hezbollah could be an ominous sign of what’s to come, as the Iranian regime may look to regain some of its lost resistance bona fides by drawing from the well that never runs dry: The Israel-Palestine conflict.