{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=2BCD46C2-69C1-4C35-8C7B-829B721A4EF3", "Biden Administration Reportedly Planning to Pay Out Millions to Illegal Immigrants", "2021-11-01", "2021", "2021-11", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", "mcconnell", "https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding Democrats\u2019 reckless tax and spending spree:\n\n\u201cThe American people are hurting. Inflation just hit another 30-year record high. Families are paying skyrocketing prices for everyday needs. The murder rate across our country just recorded its biggest jump ever.\n\n\u201cBut here\u2019s what the Biden Administration is focused on: Handing out six-figure and seven-figure payments to illegal immigrants.\n\n\u201cA few years back, liberal interest groups started trying to sue the United States government on behalf of illegal immigrants. They want American taxpayers to pay out legal damages because of the conditions some people faced as they tried to break into our country illegally.\n\n\u201cAs a legal matter, these lawsuits were borderline frivolous. Our government was all but certain to win them. But this Administration wants to stand down and voluntarily pay out massive damages.\n\n\u201c\u2018The U.S. Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services are considering payments that could amount to close to $1 million a family.\u2019\n\n\u201cA million dollars per family, Madam President. About half a million dollars per adult; about half a million dollars more per child.\n\n\u201cAmerican families are having to anxiously budget for gas and groceries, but President Biden wants to literally make millionaires out of people who have violated federal law.\n\n\u201cWhat could be more unfair and unjust to law-abiding, tax-paying American citizens?\n\n\u201cAnd talk about yet another massive incentive for more and more people to come here illegally.\n\n\u201cOn President Biden\u2019s watch, we have already seen an all-time high in illegal border crossings\u2026 combined with a decade low in arrests in the interior. Democrats have already created a major border crisis.\n\n\u201cAnd now they want to cut seven-figure checks to illegal border crossers.\n\n\u201cDemocrats are already trying to send monthly welfare payments to people here illegally. That\u2019s in the reckless taxing and spending spree they are putting together behind closed doors.\n\n\u201cBut who needs $300 a month when President Biden wants to send these folks $450,000 per person?!\n\n\u201cThat is four and a half times the payment that the Department of Defense sends to survivors of servicemembers who are killed in action. Fallen troops\u2019 families get $100,000 from the Pentagon but the Biden Administration wants to give illegal immigrants $450,000.\n\n\u201cThis is an especially extreme example of a big error that Democrats make over and over again.\n\n\u201cThe left mistakenly thinks that a compassionate border means a weak border.\n\n\u201cThey think compassion requires weakness \u2014 weak security, weak enforcement, weak on upholding the rule of law. And now, apparently, we\u2019re a cruel country unless we hand out a million dollars per family to illegal immigrants who sue America.\n\n\u201cBut the entire concept is dead wrong. It is not compassionate to lure people from all over the world through dangerous journeys with the promise of open-borders socialism.\n\n\u201cIn fact, the government paying out six-figure sums that multiply with every additional child in tow will only incentivize the riskiest and most dangerous kinds of illegal immigration. We will be guaranteeing that even more children are dragged along the dangerous journey.\n\n\u201cHonestly, this absurd idea feels like a satirical policy proposal that Republicans would have invented to make a parody out of the radical left. Oh, and the next thing you know, they\u2019ll be sending out million-dollar checks to illegal immigrants!\n\n\u201cBut this is literally what the Biden Administration wants to do \u2014 according to reports they have not denied.\n\n\u201cOut in the real world, American families already have enough reasons to worry about the Administration\u2019s spending habits.\n\n\u201cThe inflation kicked off by Democrats\u2019 springtime binge has wiped out wage gains and made family budgets even harder to square.\n\n\u201cOne recent report on soaring food prices included this quote from a shopper in Indiana: \u2018You have to pick and choose. Before, you didn\u2019t have to do that. You could just go in and buy a week or two\u2019s worth of food. Now, I can barely buy a week\u2019s worth.\u2019\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a sobering reality that too many Americans are dealing with. And it isn\u2019t limited to the grocery store.\n\n\u201cFolks in my hometown of Louisville have seen gas prices jump a full dollar in the past year.\n\n\u201cFeeding a family is getting harder. Filling up the tank is getting harder. Even heating a home this winter is shaping up to be 30% more expensive than last year.\n\n\u201cEven during a time of calm and prosperity, writing million-dollar checks to illegal immigrants would be an insult to American families.\n\n\u201cBut it\u2019s 10 times more insulting at a time like this, when Democrats\u2019 policies are forcing so many households to tighten their belts.\n\n\u201cThese are the same Democrats who are putting the finishing touches on yet another multi-trillion-dollar reckless taxing and spending spree.\n\n\u201cSo in the days and weeks ahead, when the far left tries to sell America on historic inflationary spending, historic tax hikes, and more micromanaging of American life by politicians\u2026 just remember\u2026 these are the same politicians who have proposed giving millions of dollars of taxpayers\u2019 money to people who broke federal law to enter the country.\n\n\u201cThe same people who think that\u2019s a great idea want license to transform the entire economy.\n\n\u201cLook around. I\u2019m not sure how much more of this transformation American families can stomach.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:30:49Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=2BCD46C2-69C1-4C35-8C7B-829B721A4EF3"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.8252376466989517, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}