Republican Arizona Senator Jeff Flake was quick to slam the Heritage Foundation Monday following the conservative think tank’s release of new analysis showing that the pending Senate immigration bill would cost taxpayers around $6.3 trillion.
“Here we go again,” Flake tweeted Monday morning, “New Heritage study claims huge cost for Immigration Reform. Ignores economic benefits. No dynamic scoring.”
Flake, like other senators from the bipartisan ‘Gang of 8’ who worked on an initial version of the bill, has been emphasizing that any “scoring” should be done dynamically, meaning to measure the potential economic benefits of the bill as well as the costs.
Heritage’s Robert Rector was quick to answer the criticism when asked about such complaints during Monday’s press conference.
The economic benefits of the immigration bill are “extremely small to non-existent,” Rector said.