Dianne Feinstein: “Just one thought for this body. Take the most conservative cost for California, $7 billion; 7-year bill, $1 billion a…”

“Just one thought for this body. Take the most conservative cost for California, $7 billion; 7-year bill, $1 billion a year, most of it coming from Los Angeles County, let us say $500 million a year. California is a proposition 13 State. This all has to come from general assistance. General assistance is locally funded. Los Angeles cannot raise its property tax rate under proposition 13. How does the county fund it? The county cannot fund it. This will force, if the county is to fund it--this will force the reduction of other county programs. It could be the sheriff, it could be the jail. There is no way around it. The dollars are too big. The distinguished chairman of the committee indicated that the savings, by taking all legal immigrants off of all benefits, is $18 billion. What we are telling you is we know 52 percent of this comes from California. Therefore, if California is a prop 13 State and it presses the local jurisdictions and they are funded by property taxes and they cannot raise their property taxes and they cannot say 'legal immigrants, leave the country and go home,' it is a real catch-22 for the local government.”