The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is diverting $167 million from programs like cancer research and Aging and Disability Services Programs in order to house and feed illegal alien children who continue to stream across our undefended Southern Border.
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An average of 255 illegal alien youths were taken into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) every day this month, according to the latest figures the agency provided to Congress. This is the largest number of illegal alien children ever in the care of the federal government. ‘
To pay for it, the agency says it will need an additional one or two billion dollars for the next year – above and beyond the $1.2 billion spent in 2016 and proposed for 2017 – depending on how many more arrive.
For now, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where ORR resides, is diverting $167 million from other programs to cover the cost of services for these new illegal arrivals through December 9, when the current continuing resolution expires.
HHS is in this budget crunch thanks to a massive influx of these unaccompanied minors. Normal procedure would have these minors placed with host families already in the U.S. and they would then be lost to the system and contribute to the illegal alien horde already here.
But the recent influx has quickly busted the budget and HHS is unilaterally shifting budgeted funds and making demands for more and more taxpayer dollars.
HHS received $171 million to spend on services for the illegal alien youths through the budget period covered by the current continuing resolution, which expires December 9, 2016. The agency also has a surplus of $90 million leftover from 2016, for a total of $261 million now available.
But they estimate that they will need another $40 to $165 million more just to cover expenses through December 9, so Secretary Burwell has used her authority to transfer the money to ORR from other HHS programs.
According to my sources, because there are limits to the amount of money that agency heads can move around, in this case Burwell will be cutting every appropriations account at HHS by a small percentage. That means that in order to provide services to the illegal alien youths, money is being taken from other vital health and welfare programs, including:
- $14 million from the Health Resources and Services Administration, including $4.5 million from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program and $2 million from the Maternal and Child Health program;
- $14 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for contagious disease prevention and treatment and other critical public health programs;
- $72 million from the National Institutes of Health, for research on cancer, diabetes, drug abuse, mental health, infectious diseases and much more;
- $8 million from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, for treatment and prevention programs;
- $8 million from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services;
- $39 million from the Children and Families Services Program;
- $4 million from the Aging and Disability Services Programs;
- $3 million from the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund, including more than $1 million from the Pandemic Influenza and BioShield Fund.
The email states that unless Congress appropriates more money for services for the illegal alien youths in their custody, the new arrivals might be “stranded” at the border.
It appears that President Obama’s strategy of inviting more and more illegal immigration has a cost . . . mostly to taxpayers and to those suffering from cancer or other diseases that HHS is no longer funding research for.