Earlier this week, House Judiciary Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) admitted that the purpose of an anti-immigrant hearing he plans to hold shortly is to “embarrass the president.” In an interview with the right-wing publication Human Events Rep. Steve King (R-IA) goes even further, saying that the goal of the hearing should be nothing less than public humiliation of the Obama Administration.
A key House Republican is calling for congressional hearings into President Obama’s decision to grant “administrative amnesty” by pulling out hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens already in the deportation pipeline. […]
King said Congress has limited powers in what it can do to force the Obama administration to adhere to immigration laws, but that it can cut funding to the departments involved “to send a powerful message to the White House. Or, we can hold hearings and bring them forward to publicly humiliate them until they become politically vulnerable, and at that point, Obama might withdraw such a position,” King said.
The McGuffin driving King’s latest attempt to humiliate President Obama is the administration’s recent decision to prioritize enforcement of immigration laws against undocumented immigrants who are violent or otherwise potentially dangerous. But the truth is that some kind of prioritization is absolutely necessary unless King plans to jack up the federal deficit in order to round up immigrants who pose no threat whatsoever to anyone.
It would cost a massive $285 billion to round up every man, woman, and child who is in the United States illegally and deport them to their country of origin. That’s more than six times the Department of Homeland Security’s entire budget for FY 2011. Given these financial constraints, the Obama Administration unquestionably made the right decision by targeting its very limited resources on efforts that actually protect the American people from harm.
If King wants to argue that America should take on even more debt to round up taxpayers and college students, then he is welcome to make those arguments. Clearly, however, King has no interest in discussing actual facts and real data — he just sees an opportunity to embarrass President Obama.