- Messages
- 16,026
- Reaction score
- 10,200
- Points
- 288
EXPOSED
“California figured this out, that they can force the federal government to spend $9 for every $1 that it spends. They're using it to launder money, and this is the way they do it.
- It costs no money to California because they raise taxes on managed care companies, the companies that are providing Medicaid.
- So they go to these companies and say, we're going to tax you, but don't worry, we're going to give you all of the money that we just taxed you from, right back.
- But in the meantime, we're going to take that money and we're going to pull down federal dollars, and that'll let us have more money so that we can spend it on expanding the population for Medicaid and spend it on illegal immigrants.
In fact, this scheme has allowed California to spend nearly $4 billion to put illegal immigrants to have Medicaid. $4 billion. This is crazy. And this total scheme is spending more money in federal dollars in California that we send in federal dollars than the entire state of Florida spends in one year in their entire annual budget. So this is absurd.
This has to be corrected. California is stealing federal dollars and they're, they're rubbing our noses in it by paying for illegal immigrants and encouraging them.”
BREAKDOWN
Based on the analysis of legal documents, particularly the U.S. Constitution and related federal laws, the operation described in the X posts—where states like California exploit federal funding mechanisms to expand programs like Medicaid for illegal immigrants—appears to deviate from the original intent of the U.S. federal system as envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Here's a detailed breakdown:
### Constitutional Framework
1. **Federalism and Enumerated Powers**: The U.S. Constitution establishes a federal system where powers are divided between the federal government and the states. The federal government's powers are enumerated in Article I, Section 8, and include responsibilities like national defense, interstate commerce, and foreign policy. States retain residual powers under the Tenth Amendment, which states that powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people.
2. **Spending Clause**: Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 grants Congress the power to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." This has been interpreted broadly to allow federal spending on programs like Medicaid, but the intent was to ensure that such spending benefits the nation as a whole, not to enable states to manipulate federal funds for purposes that might contradict federal law or policy, such as aiding illegal immigrants in ways that undermine federal immigration enforcement.
3. **Immigration and Naturalization**: Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 gives Congress the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization. This power has been interpreted to mean that immigration policy is primarily a federal responsibility. States are not intended to create policies that conflict with federal immigration law, as established in cases like *Arizona v. United States* (2012), where the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot enact laws that interfere with federal immigration enforcement.
### Legal and Policy Analysis
- **Medicaid and Federal Funding**: Medicaid is a joint federal-state program, with the federal government providing matching funds to states based on their expenditures. However, the federal government sets eligibility criteria, which traditionally exclude illegal immigrants. The scheme described in the X posts suggests a circumvention of these criteria through a loophole, which could be seen as an abuse of the federal funding mechanism. This is not aligned with the original intent of federalism, where states are expected to operate within the bounds of federal law and policy.
- **SALT Deduction**: The State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction, as discussed in related posts, allows taxpayers in high-tax states to deduct state and local taxes from their federal taxable income. Historically, this was intended to prevent double taxation and support state autonomy in taxation. However, the cap introduced by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) in 2017 was a response to concerns that the deduction disproportionately benefited high-income taxpayers in high-tax states, potentially undermining the principle of tax equity. The original intent of the U.S. tax system, as reflected in constitutional debates, was to ensure a fair distribution of the tax burden, not to subsidize state policies that might be seen as inefficient or contrary to federal interests.
- **Immigration Policy**: The Founding Fathers did not anticipate modern issues like illegal immigration, but the Constitution's structure implies a unified national approach to such matters. The federal government is tasked with securing borders and enforcing immigration laws, as seen in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). States exploiting federal funds to support illegal immigrants could be seen as undermining this federal authority, which is not in line with the intended operation of the U.S. system.