president Donald Trump When he arrived at Mar-a-Lago, Florida for the weekend, he told reporters a huge lie.
On Friday afternoon, Trump strode toward cameras on the tarmac and addressed reporters but did not answer questions. He went on a tirade about the government shutdown, which he has been trying to blame on Democrats:
PRESIDENT DONALD: So the shutdown continues. The Republican Party will not pay a trillion dollars to illegal immigrants entering our country.
Coming for many reasons, from prison, from prison, from all over the world, from Venezuela, from many countries. We won’t do that.
So the shutdown continues. This is a Democratic shutdown. This is Schumer’s hiatus, as his career fails and it’s all over.
But CNN’s Daniel Dyeret al. debunked the $1.5 trillion claim while explaining its origins:
Putting aside the subjective but dubious claim that Democrats are seeking to undermine others’ health care — Democrats have proposed reversing Trump-approved cuts to Medicaid and other health plans and extending pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies scheduled to expire at the end of the year — they are not proposing spending $1.5 trillion on undocumented immigrants. Undocumented people are not eligible for Obamacare subsidies or federal Medicaid coverage (hospitals are required to provide emergency care to people regardless of immigration status or ability to pay).
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog group, estimates that the spending proposals released by Democrats in September would add $1.5 trillion to the debt over the next decade. But that number isn’t specific to undocumented people. The White House itself has claimed that Democrats have proposed spending about $193 billion – far less than Trump’s “$1.5 trillion” – on health care for “illegal immigrants and other non-citizens” as a priority. The White House released a detailed list, making clear that even the smaller amount, based on its own disputed calculations, would mostly go to these “other non-citizens” who are legally in the United States.
