OAN Staff James Myers
2:11pm – Tuesday, December 3, 2024
Illegal immigration cost U.S. taxpayers a whopping 2.6% of the U.S. government's total federal spending of $6.1 trillion for all of fiscal year 2023.
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According to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), this amounts to $150.7 billion.
The staggering amount of cash paid to illegal immigrants who enter and reside in the United States would rival the spending of any other government agency as a whole.
DOGE provides inflation-adjusted comparisons. .
In addition to illegal immigration, DOGE's accounts also target the National Institutes of Health (NIH), California high-speed rail projects, and foreign diversity grants.
The agency also went after the federal government for its decision to spend $2.5 million on Super Bowl ads for the census.
Musk's explanation comes as he attacks the federal government for using only 12% of the space at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., because an alarming number of employees did not return to the office after the coronavirus pandemic. There is.
The government still pays for these office spaces, but much of it is unused or only partially utilized by employees.
Additionally, Musk and Ramaswamy drew comparisons between this spending and other large-scale initiatives in U.S. history in social media posts about immigration sent out Monday night.
For example, the Apollo space program cost $257 billion, adjusted for inflation, about $1 billion more than illegal immigrants cost taxpayers last year.
The crisis also cost more than $120 billion more in just one year than the secret World War II program to develop the first atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project cost $30 billion when adjusted for inflation.
What's more, Hoover Dam only cost $1 billion to build, XPost points out.
But Musk and Ramaswamy aren't necessarily trying to kill every program or initiative they analyze or attack on social media.
Another eye-opening fact is that the US spent $150.7 billion on illegal immigration in 2023, nearly 19% of all US defense spending in that year.
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