Cost estimates for Hurricane Harvey and deporting Dreamers have started to come in. The very early estimates of fixing the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey were in the $10 to $35 billion range. Then Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that Harvey was "bigger than Katrina" and he estimated an overall cost to repair the damage as being $125 billion or more. Now costs of $180 to $190 billion are being voiced and these might be just the costs to the federal government. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) is estimating a relief and rebuild cost of $1 trillion, of which the federal government would pay $80 billion. If the $1 trillion cost is proven to be accurate, it is unlikely that the federal government would pay less than 10 percent. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) is talking about three waves of spending. The $7.85 billion in Harvey spending by the Trump administration is seemingly wholly inadequate but it may be just a placeholder pending a better estimate of costs.
The "Arizona Republic" asked ICE what it would cost to deport someone who'd immigrated to the United States illegally, and learned that, on average, the agency spent $10,854 per deportee, or a total bill of over $8.5 billion. This is not the total cost of deporting the 700,000+ Dreamers, as there would be a reduction in GDP and in the financing of Social Security. When Fox News host Chris Wallace confronted Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin with the figures yesterday, he could only reply that the economic consequences of deporting such a large number of people are very complicated.
The issue that always comes up when it comes to paying for the damages resulting from a great natural disaster, or in this case, paying to deport a large number of people, is whether or not cuts in other spending must offset the costs. As of this time there don't seem to be any lawmakers who have specifically called for offsets, however, other voices important to Republican fundraising have spoken out. The Club for Growth wants the Harvey aid to be offset; also, Dan Heller, Heritage Action's vice president, wants anything that is out of the scope of being "truly emergency in nature" to be offset. President Trump wants a stand-alone bill.
In Other News
*Senate Democrats are making a major push to defeat the nomination of Sam Clovis as USDA's under secretary for research, education and economics. Clovis has said that Barack Obama was being "given a pass because he is Black," has called Eric Holder (former attorney general) a "racist black," declared homosexuality a choice, and called progressives "race traitors" and "race traders." Clovis is not a scientist, although the position calls for a scientist.
*North Korea is claiming that it has tested, with "perfect success," a powerful hydrogen bomb that could be fitted to an ICBM. President Trump has tweeted: "South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!" The one thing not mentioned is, of course, military force. Trump keeps repeating that all options are on the table; however, one option that he has taken off the table is diplomacy. He once declared the era of "strategic patience" to be over and now has declared any talks to be of no value.
*A judge has called out Trump's Election Integrity Commission for violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) by not fully disclosing public documents prior to their first meeting. The only sanction to be imposed against the commission is that it must disclose documents to the public before its September meeting.
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