You Get What You are Willing to Pay For

Perhaps in a move to give House Republicans a glimpse of the near future, the Homeland Security Department’s Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has announced that, in anticipation of the tight budget that will result from The Sequester, ICE has started releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants being held in immigration jails awaiting deportation proceedings.

 

Instead of holding them for $164 per day, ICE is letting them out on “supervised release,” a program costing between 50 cents and $14 per day.

Other cost cutting measures are sure to follow, including border patrols and airport screenings.

This move, and the other anticipated ones, are menu items from what can be termed  “Republican Hell.”

And Republican congresscreeps are screaming bloody murder.

I think that this is a good proactive move on the part of the administration. It not only cuts spending – a “Republican Heaven” but it gives Americans an idea of how many ways they want to skewer their Republican legislators. But I think it doesn’t go far enough.

Like legal services and law enforcement.

Federal courts should maybe suspend some legal proceedings like issuing Writs of Habeas Corpus. And instead of having federal law enforcement officers, maybe they could be replaced by drones.

Then there’s all the hidden costs of running Congress.

While federal legislators have constitutionally guaranteed salaries, isn’t it time that they close their dining rooms and plushy weight rooms? Cut travel budgets and perks? Maybe they will have to take out their own trash, too. And they are going to have to pay for their own smartphones.

If TEApublicans are truly salivating over sequester, let them get a piece of what they are shoveling down the throats of the middle class.