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Dear John,
Welcome back to my West Texas Wrap-Up. Please remember to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube for regular updates on how I am serving the people of West Texas!
The Cost of Biden's Border Crisis
This week, as Chairman of the House Budget Committee, I held an oversight hearing detailing the true cost of Biden's Border Crisis.
The American people are well aware of the national security and humanitarian disaster that has ensued as a result of our wide-open border, but we haven’t spoken enough about the financial burden to taxpayers and the fiscal impact.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates that the cost - through services like education, Medicaid, uncompensated care at hospitals, and criminal proceedings - of the roughly 22 million people that are estimated to be in this country illegally comes out to $150 billion a year or nearly $9,000 per illegal immigrant.
The majority of this financial burden is borne by state and local governments, who - unlike their federal government - can't print or borrow money, forcing them to absorb the cost through raising taxes or cutting services to their citizens.
Watch my opening statement HERE.
Immediately before the hearing, I joined America's Newsroom on Fox News to discuss how we’re spending more for each illegal immigrant than we are on our most vulnerable citizens through Medicaid or for military retirement benefits. That’s unacceptable and unsustainable.
Watch my interview with Dana Perino HERE.
As a Texan, I understand the severe impact Biden’s border crisis has had on our state. Ranchers throughout West Texas routinely find bodies of dead migrants or have their property destroyed. Jails, schools, hospitals, and local communities have incurred the responsibility of facilitating migrants at a rate they cannot sustain. Small localities along the border have had to respond to the federal government's failures by reallocating resources to not only provide for these migrants but also secure their communities.
That's why my friend Rep. August Pfluger and I led our colleagues in demanding the federal government reimburse the State of Texas and its taxpayers for the cost incurred due to President Biden's open border crisis.
Read more here.
Standing Up for Israel
I led my colleagues in condemning the International Criminal Court's (ICC) reported decision to issue arrest warrants against Israeli officials. The International Criminal Court has no right to infringe on the sovereign authority of a democratic country. If they dare try, the United States must stand with our ally Israel and its right of self-defense and immediately sanction ICC officials.
Read the full letter here:
As former Vice Chancellor of the Texas Tech University System, I have been closely monitoring the violence and chaos that has consumed campuses across the country.
While countless university administrators have succumbed to the tyranny of a vocal minority, I publicly commend University of Texas at Austin President Jay Hartzell for maintaining order on campus and preventing the violent riots like we've witness across the country.
Protecting students from criminal acts and ensuring they have access to the classroom and educational resources should not be a novel concept. However, on many campuses today, university leaders have abdicated their responsibility for protecting students in exchange for pandering to the threats and criminal agenda of a minority mob of protestors.
Whether the criminal agenda is directed at Jewish students or any other student group, university leaders should have zero tolerance for lawlessness and any threat to the safety of their students.
I urge university leaders across the country to follow the example of UT President Hartzell and stand strong against the minority mob of criminal protestors.
The First Amendment guarantees Americans’ right to freedom of speech and assembly, but this right does not protect the lawlessness and criminal activity we are witnessing on so many college campuses across the country.
President Hartzell, you are making ALL Texans proud!
Pushing Back on the Left
This week, the House of Representatives voted on H.R. 7109, the Equal Representation Act, legislation to require a citizenship question on the U.S. census and prohibit non-citizens from counting toward the reapportionment of Congressional representation.
The census is a critical tool in determining everything from Congressional representation to allocating federal tax dollars to the states. Rewarding open border policies by counting non-citizens in the census isn't just a bureaucratic inconvenience, it undermines the accurate representation of Americans and dilutes their vote. I was proud to support legislation to make sure American citizens - and American citizens only - are represented by their federal government.
While this bill passed the House, every single Democrat member voted no.
I was proud to cosponsor a Congressional Review Act to overturn the Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule which would effectively create an electric vehicle mandate.
This rule would limit consumer choice, require 67% of new light-duty sales to be electric by 2023, and put the American car industry at the whim of China and its monopoly on electric vehicle batteries.
President Biden's pandering to the Radical Left's obsession with foisting electric vehicles on Americans is adding to the economic hardships of every day workers. Biden cannot force Americans to fund his climate-crazed utopia and simultaneously undercut their ability to afford a car that allows them to work and provide for their families.
What Members are Saying
In the News
On Social Media
It is an honor and privilege to represent you in Congress. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to our fellow West Texans and encourage them to sign up here for this update.
Your friend and fellow West Texan,
Jodey C. Arrington
Member of Congress
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