20-Year Cost of 'Build Back Better' Amnesty: $483 billion
CBO estimates fiscal drain would be even bigger after that
By Steven A. Camarota on December 6, 2021
As the Senate debates the Build Back Better Act (H.R. 5376), a little-noticed part of the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) cost estimates shows that the bill’s amnesty provisions will create enormous fiscal costs for taxpayers. Like its prior fiscal cost estimate for a larger-scale amnesty, or its estimates for smaller amnesties, CBO’s most recent fiscal estimate (new revenue minus new expenditures) for H.R. 5376 shows a large negative fiscal impact — $124 billion in the first 10 years.
But what is most striking about the CBO’s newest estimate is that the amnesty would create an additional $359 billion in net costs in the second decade after passage. The total net fiscal cost of the bill’s amnesty provisions over 20 years is $483 billion. Perhaps equally important, CBO states that the bill would increase the deficit “by larger amounts in the subsequent decade”.
As the Center has emphasized, the cost of any amnesty increases over time as illegal immigrants become eligible for more and more social programs, especially Social Security and Medicare. CBO’s extension of its normal 10-year time horizon is a welcome development that helps to capture more of these long-term costs.
https://cis.org/Camarota/20Year-Cost-Build-Back-Better-Amnesty-483-billion
