Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Democrats are going all in to defend forcing American taxpayers to subsidize health insurance benefits for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
In April, President Joe Biden announced plans to open Obamacare and Medicaid rolls, both subsidized by American taxpayers, to nearly 600,000 DACA illegal aliens. Former President Barack Obama first created the DACA program via executive order, shielding more than a million illegal aliens from deportation through the years.
Currently, about 25 million Americans remain uninsured. Even for those with health insurance, recent polling has found that about half of Americans say they struggle to pay monthly insurance costs.
WATCH: Joe Biden Announces Plan to Expand Obamacare, Medicaid for DACA Illegal Aliens
During a subcommittee hearing this week, Democrats seemingly made giving Obamacare benefits to DACA illegal aliens a policy plank that they hope to extend, eventually, to all of the nation’s 11 to 22 million illegal aliens.
“We’re having a hearing today as to why people who are American, they’re American, do not deserve healthcare. They’re here lawfully,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said. “They pay more taxes than Facebook does, they pay more taxes than many of our federal corporations do, they pay for — DACA recipients pay for members of Congress’s healthcare more than Facebook does.”
Ocasio Cortez also suggested that DACA illegal aliens “are oftentimes more patriotic” than American citizens.
“They give and give and give to a country that does not love them back in their actions,” she continued.
Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) called illegal immigration at the United States-Mexico border “a racist myth” and urged Congress to pass legislation that would give Obamacare benefits to all illegal aliens living in the country.
“Healthcare is a human right and it should be available to everyone who resides in this country no matter who they are,” Lee said. ” … this should be an easy fix.”
Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) called it “absolutely shameful” for the U.S. not to give Obamacare benefits to DACA illegal aliens, suggesting that the illegal alien population has “earned” the right to health insurance.
Meanwhile, Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) claimed illegal aliens do not come to the U.S. seeking free health insurance, though an investigation by the House Homeland Security Committee found that to be exactly the case.
Illegal aliens cost American taxpayers, the report states, billions in unpaid medical bills every year. In Yuma, Arizona, executives with the Yuma Regional Medical Center reveal that in just one year, taxpayers were left with $26 million in unpaid medical bills from illegal aliens who showed up to the hospital requesting free care.
Likewise, the Federation for American Immigration Reform reported that illegal immigration costs the nation’s hospital systems at least $23 billion annually — $8.2 billion of which is uncompensated medical care for illegal aliens.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.