The government shutdown drama unfolding in Washington is political theater covering up something far worse.  While legislators argue over budget details, they’re ignoring an uncomfortable truth: Congress has already surrendered its most important power — the power to control spending — and the bill has arrived.

That bill totals $170 billion over the next decade.

This isn’t money Congress approved.  It’s money the Executive Branch simply decided to spend, creating mandatory costs through administrative decisions that lawmakers are now forced to fund.  How?  By strategically expanding “parole” authority under immigration law to reclassify millions of people, instantly making them eligible for federal benefits Congress never authorized.

The Parole Loophole

The whole system turns on a single phrase: “lawfully present.”  Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Department of Homeland Security can “parole” non-citizens into the country temporarily.  The magic number is one year — parole someone for a year or more, and federal law labels them “lawfully present,” opening the door to federal benefits.

By the end of 2024, the administration had implemented 605 immigration-related executive actions, according to the Migration Policy Institute.  Critics say this was deliberate: Administratively expand who qualifies for benefits without asking Congress.  Millions who entered illegally were transformed, through bureaucratic paperwork, into people with legal claims on taxpayer-funded programs.

Three Ways the Money Drains Out

The financial damage hits through three channels, draining resources at federal, state, and local levels.

1. Health Care Subsidies

The biggest cost flows through the Affordable Care Act.  People classified as “lawfully present” become eligible for ACA marketplace plans, including premium tax credits and cost-sharing help — subsidies paid entirely by federal taxpayers.  Congressional Budget Office analysis reveals that cutting off this population’s ACA access would save roughly $124 billion between 2025 and 2034.  That’s $124 billion the government will spend insuring people whose eligibility comes solely from an executive decision.

Nearly 550,000 people earning below the poverty line are enrolled in subsidized marketplace plans.  Most are “lawfully present” immigrants who can’t get Medicaid because of their immigration status, often because they’re in the mandatory five-year waiting period.  Proposed laws to tighten eligibility would result in about 1.4 million lawfully present immigrants losing health coverage across all federal programs.

2. Emergency Medical Care

Federal law requires states to provide emergency Medicaid coverage to people who would otherwise qualify except for their immigration status.  This includes both those here illegally and those in waiting periods.  The CBO’s October 2024 letter to the House Budget Committee laid out the damage: Between 2017 and 2023, federal and state governments spent a combined $26.554 billion on emergency medical services for this group — $18.038 billion federal, $8.516 billion state.

The spending pattern tells the story.  The sharpest increases happened from 2021 forward, matching exactly when arrivals surged.  Emergency rooms can’t turn patients away, but someone has to pay.  That someone is the taxpayer.

3. State and Local Costs

Beyond health care, cities and towns face crushing obligations.  A June 2025 CBO analysis found that in 2023 alone, direct spending increases — mostly for K–12 education, shelter, and related services — hit $19.3 billion.  After accounting for new tax revenue from this population ($10.1 billion), the net cost to state and local governments reached $9.2 billion in just one year.

These aren’t optional expenses.  Schools must educate children who show up.  Shelters must house families.  Social services must respond to emergencies.  Local budgets absorb the hit while waiting for federal money that rarely covers actual costs.

The Rhetorical Shell Game

Here’s where political messaging becomes Orwellian.  Democrat leadership insists that “Federal law prohibits the expenditure of taxpayer dollars on providing health care to undocumented immigrants” and claims that Democrats have no interest in changing that law.  Technically true.  Politically deceptive.

The sleight of hand lies in the word “undocumented.”  By administratively reclassifying millions who entered illegally as “lawfully present” through expanded parole authority, the previous administration ensured that these individuals are no longer categorized as “undocumented immigrants” — even though they entered illegally and would have been denied entry under traditional enforcement.

Democrats can claim with a straight face that they’re not spending taxpayer money on “undocumented immigrants” because the administration already changed their documentation status through executive action.  The people receiving $124 billion in ACA subsidies aren’t “undocumented”; they’re “lawfully present.”  Never mind that this status was created by bureaucratic reclassification rather than the legal immigration process Congress designed.

When Republicans demand an end to taxpayer funding for benefits to illegal aliens, Democrats respond that no such funding exists — because the aliens in question have been administratively redefined.  They already changed the practical effect of federal law through executive classification, and now they’re defending that accomplished change as the status quo Congress intended.

The Republican position isn’t about changing immigration law.  It’s about refusing to fund the fiscal consequences of administrative decisions that circumvented immigration law.  When the Trump administration won’t continue funding these obligations, Democrats frame this as Republicans “shutting down the government” and “inflicting pain on American citizens.”

But that framing turns reality upside-down.  The pain inflicted on American citizens — the $170 billion diverted from veterans, infrastructure, and genuine domestic priorities — already occurred when the prior administration created these obligations without congressional approval.  The current administration is simply refusing to continue funding a constitutional violation.

The Common Sense Test

The political vitriol directed at the current administration has obliterated basic reasoning.  Strip away the partisan fury and ask: Did anyone with common sense believe there would be no consequences for allowing unprecedented numbers of illegal aliens into the country — while the previous administration insisted the border was secure?

The numbers don’t lie.  The prior administration implemented 605 immigration-related executive actions while claiming that border security was under control.  Millions entered illegally, were reclassified as “lawfully present,” and became eligible for federal benefits.  The fiscal consequences — $170 billion and counting — were entirely predictable.

Yet pointing out this reality gets labeled as extremism.  The MAGA movement’s core insight wasn’t radical: Actions have consequences, open borders cost money, and governments should prioritize their own legal citizens.

The America First Response

These expenditures represent an outrageous misuse of limited resources.  The “America First” view sees every dollar spent on this administratively created group as a dollar taken from citizens in need: veterans dealing with homelessness and PTSD while waiting months for V.A. care, service members and their families who must rely on private charities like Tunnels to Towers to get support their own government should provide, working families crushed by inflation, seniors watching their savings disappear, homeless Americans sleeping on streets.

This perspective flips the question: What justifies spending $170 billion on people whose eligibility was created by executive paperwork while legal citizens — including immigrants who came here the right way — suffer?  When does putting legal citizens first stop being discrimination and become basic responsibility?

Taking Back Control

Congress must reclaim the constitutional authority it surrendered.  The scope of discretionary powers like parole must be clearly limited, with explicit legal language requiring congressional approval before any status change that triggers federal benefits.

The $170 billion now straining federal, state, and local budgets is the cost of congressional surrender to executive overreach.  The question is whether lawmakers will fight to reclaim what they’ve lost, or whether this becomes the new normal: executives spending, Congress scrambling to fund obligations it never approved, and taxpayers stuck with the bill.

Image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 (cropped).