CIS:
CBO Says Senate DREAM Act Would Cost Taxpayers Billions

By Andrew R. Arthur on December 18, 2017

In Washington, bad news is generally released on Friday. On Friday, December 15, 2017, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its cost estimate of S. 1615, the DREAM Act of 2017. The news was not good for that legislation.

The bill would direct the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to cancel removal and grant conditional lawful permanent resident (LPR) status to illegal aliens and aliens in Temporary Protected Status (TPS)) who: were physically present in this country for the four years prior to enactment; were under 18 years of age when they initially entered the United States; are not inadmissible on criminal, security, terrorism, or other grounds; are not persecutors; have not been convicted of certain federal or state offenses; and have fulfilled specified educational requirements.

The bill provides a waiver for the criminal removability bars “for humanitarian purposes or family unity or if the waiver is otherwise in the public interest.”

It would also provide for conditional lawful permanent resident status for aliens who have received Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), unless the alien had engaged in conduct rendering the alien ineligible for DACA since gaining that status.

Finally, the bill provides for removal of the conditions on that LPR status, and contains a confidentiality provision barring release of information provided by applicants for conditional LPR status or DACA, subject to limited exceptions.

That estimate states:

CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting S. 1615 would increase direct spending by $26.8 billion over the 2018-2027 period. Over that same period, CBO and JCT estimate that the bill would increase revenues, on net, by $0.9 billion — a decline in on-budget revenues of $4.3 billion and an increase in off-budget revenues [Social Security taxes] of $5.3 billion.

In total, CBO and JCT estimate that changes in direct spending and revenues from enacting S. 1615 would increase budget deficits by $25.9 billion over the 2018-2027 period, boosting on-budget deficits by $30.6 billion and decreasing off-budget deficits by $4.7 billion over that period.
It also “estimates that providing higher education assistance for newly eligible people under S. 1615 would cost $1.0 billion over the 2018-2022 period.”

As the CBO explains:… read the rest here.