George Miller: “This is a burden that these States are saddled with through no actions of their own or fault of their own, and now what…”

“This is a burden that these States are saddled with through no actions of their own or fault of their own, and now what we are doing is when they had access to money under the Berman amendment, what we are now suggesting is that the States have to jump over an unrelated hurdle to get access to the money. The point is the problem that the States have had is that they are saddled with the burden day in and day out through no choice of their own, and yet if they do not change their laws they cannot get access to the money. I appreciate the gentleman has a theoretical formula worked out about what pool of money States will go to and whether that money will be there. It is not an entitlement, so we do not know that it will be there at the end of this budget process. But the fact is the burden goes on in any case, and that is what the States are complaining about. So now the gentleman is erecting these hurdles, and it has nothing to do with the fact that they have thousands of beds taken up with illegals through a failure of Federal policy.”