Today on MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews aired the clip of House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) admitting that extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich would “dig the hole deeper” in terms of the national deficit. With his admission, Cantor has put Republican supply-siders in the awkward position of confronting the fact that their faith-based tax cut ideology would blow an $830 billion hole in the budget. Matthews pressed Bilbray on this point, only to witness his guest stammer and sputter to avoid answering the question directly:

MATTHEWS: Well there he is, Congressman Bilbray, your leader, your whip is now admitting that if you cut taxes, you’re raising the deficit. … Why would he say something like that that runs against your orthodoxy?

BILBRAY: The fact is, look, Chris, you can’t get around the fact –

MATTHEWS: Well the fact is that he just said that. Why did he just say that cutting taxes at this point is going to yield a lower revenue and therefore a bigger deficit? What he just said what contradicts to what you just said.

BILBRAY: We’re not even talking about cutting about taxes. We’re talking about not allowing an increase –

MATTHEWS: — continuing the Bush tax cuts is what we’re talking about. And that’s what he was talking about.

BILBRAY: And that is maintaining the status quo –

MATTHEWS: — Are you in disagreement with Eric Cantor? Just tell me you disagree with him and we’ll be on the same page.

BILBRAY: I am disagreement with anybody that thinks we can get ourselves out of this mess by raising more taxes on the American people.

Watch it:

“I oppose adding even one more dollar to the national deficit – instead we need to be paying it down,” Bilbray says on his campaign website.

Yesterday on MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews asked Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) to give a “non-ethnic” example of how Arizona cops will be able to identify undocumented immigrants once the state’s controversial “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” is signed into law. Bilbray, who supports the bill, confidently offered an array of criteria, ranging from “shoes” to “behavior things”:

MATTHEWS: Like what, like what? Give me a non-ethnic aspect that would tell you to pick up somebody.

BILBRAY: They will look at the kind of dress you wear, there’s different type of attire, there’s different type of…right down to the shoes, right down to the clothes. But mostly by behavior it’s mostly behavior, just as the law enforcement people here in Washington, DC does it based on certain criminal activity there is behavior things that professionals are trained in across the board and this group shouldn’t be exempt from those observations as much as anybody else.

Watch it:

Bilbray’s comments illustrate exactly what civil rights activists fear will happen. The bill allows warrantless arrests of anyone who raises “reasonable suspicion” about his or her immigration status. Critics charge that it essentially legalizes racial profiling. Yet Bilbray also unintentionally raises the point that the bill will allow police to go after anyone based on the abstract notion that undocumented immigrants dress differently than legal residents. Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio has already put the vague principle into practice, having noted in the past that his officers use “the speech, the clothes, the environment, the erratic behavior” of a “suspect” to determine if they’re “illegal.” Arpaio also has 2,700 lawsuits collecting dust on his desk and is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice following racial-profiling and discrimination complaints against his office.

Bilbray heads the House Immigration Reform Caucus (HIRC), a group of (mostly Republican) representatives founded by former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) with the mission of stopping “the explosive growth in illegal immigration,” “reversing the growth in legal immigration,” and halting “amnesties.” Before being elected to office, Bilbray was paid $300,000 by the anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) to serve as a lobbyist for them on the Hill, according to Alternet’s Joshua Holland. Bilbray’s mother emigrated from Australia to the U.S. He’s conveniently “carved out exceptions” that would apply to him and his family in all the bills he’s written and backed.

As ThinkProgress reported earlier today, some military families have been concerned about how the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will affect their health care. Fears about the legislation have been fueled, in part, by lawmakers like Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA), who has claimed that “now their programs are going to be administered like welfare programs, rather than earned military benefits.”

There is another piece of misinformation floating around that’s important to clear up. The new law has an individual responsibility requirement, meaning that every person must have health coverage (or receive an affordability waiver), otherwise he/she will be subjected to a fee. The Affordable Care Act doesn’t explicitly state that TRICARE — the military’s health program — will meet the individual responsibility requirement. So on Saturday, lawmakers — out of an abundance of caution — passed separate legislation affirming that TRICARE will not be affected. As House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) stated when the legislation was unanimously approved:

While beneficiaries of these programs will already meet the minimum requirements for individual health insurance and will not be required to purchase additional coverage, the TRICARE Affirmation Act would provide clarification by changing the tax code to state it in law.

In the Senate, Jim Webb (D-VA) has introduced a companion bill to Skelton’s, and Daniel Akaka (D-HI) has put forth similar legislation on a related matter. Last night, Webb asked for unanimous consent to approve both measures. While Akaka’s would have to head back to the House for a vote, Webb’s — which has attracted six Republican co-sponsors — could go straight to the President for his signature, since the House already passed the Skelton bill. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) objected, however, saying that Republicans wanted them attached to the reconciliation bill as an amendment sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), which would then have to go back to the House:

WEBB: Mr. President, I would suggest to my colleague from North Carolina and to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that if you really want to fix this problem, we can fix it right now and we should fix it right now. We should not allow this issue to be tied up in the separate melodrama of the moment here. [...]

COBURN: We’ve got this — we got this a minute and a half ago to see the language. You have an amendment on the floor that actually accomplishes everything you want to do, and why are we doing this? Because you don’t want to mess up a package that’s clean. It has every application, the Burr amendment, to this. With that and the fact that this is exactly the kind of shenanigans the American people don’t want, I object.

WEBB: Let the American people understand the Republicans objected to a matter that could have been fixed by law tomorrow.

Webb brought his legislation up on the floor again today, around 4:30 p.m., saying that he would be working with Republicans to “attempt to clear these today.” Watch Webb’s floor addresses:

Republicans had been trying to attach all sorts of “poison pill” amendments to delay the reconciliation legislation, including one to ban all federal funding for the group ACORN, which has already announced that it is shutting down. Since their attempt failed, and the reconciliation bill is already back in the House, the TRICARE legislation needs to pass the Senate as a stand-alone bill, as Webb had tried to do yesterday.

Even though Bilbray and all other House Republicans voted for this measure, they’re now trying to argue that it doesn’t go far enough. Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN) has another piece of legislation on the issue, which has attracted 32 co-sponsors — all Republicans. Bilbray spokesman Fritz Chaleff wrote to ThinkProgress that Skelton’s legislation says only that “TRICARE meets the minimal standards of coverage,” while the GOP bill “carves out TRICARE from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” However, Democratic aides on Capitol Hill told ThinkProgress that the the Skelton legislation is more than sufficient and the other bill is political grandstanding.

Everyone from military and veterans organizations to the chairs of relevant House committees to Veterans Affairs officials have confirmed that TRICARE will not be affected by the new health care law.

This week, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) told KUSI in San Diego that one of the most offensive parts of the health care reform law is that it will move TRICARE, the health program covering servicemembers and their families, out of the Defense Department and “to the department that handles welfare.” He added that once members of the military find out, “all hell is going to break loose”:

BILBRAY: When the retired military finds out that their TRICARE has been moved out of the Department of Defense to the department that handles welfare — when you tell somebody that’s served this country in the military, that now their programs are going to be administered like welfare programs, rather than earned military benefits, all hell is going to break loose. I can’t wait for mom to hear that her TRICARE now is going to be administered by the welfare people.

Q: That’s just one of the things we keep finding out as we keep peeling the onion on this day after.

Watch it:

There is no basis to Bilbray’s claim, which he has repeated to other outlets. The Administration for Children and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services administers the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, aka “welfare,” and nothing in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act says that TRICARE will be going there. “Those who depend on TriCARE should rest assured — TRICARE will not change under health insurance reform,” HHS spokesman Nick Papas told ThinkProgress. TriCARE spokesman Austin Camacho has also said, “Tricare is a DoD agency, and I’m quite sure it will stay that way.” Even Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), appearing on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on Monday, insisted that the Affordable Care Act won’t affect military care. Watch it:

Vietnam Veterans of America President John Rowan denounced the voices who are trying to “frighten veterans” with misinformation on TRICARE:

It is unfortunate that some continue to raise what is now even more clearly a false alarm that is apparently meant to frighten veterans and their families in order to prompt them to oppose the pending legislation. While there is legitimate debate as to whether or not the pending health care measures should become law, VVA does not appreciate spreading rumors that are not accurate by any political partisan from any point of the political spectrum

Even the American Legion, usually one of the most conservative veterans groups, has said military members “can rest assured that her TRICARE benefits are secure under the law signed by President Obama.” The Veterans of Foreign Wars is urging the passage of a companion GOP bill, saying it “would help clear up ambiguities.”

Additionally, the chairs of five House committees — including Veterans Affairs and Armed Services — have written that they reviewed the health care legislation and concluded that the intent “was never to undermine or change” TRICARE. VA officials, including Shinseki, have said the same.