Turns out that stealing migrant children and putting them in baby jails and then being forced by the courts to reunite them with their families is an expensive proposition. It's cost at least $40 million in just the last two months to "care" for and house the children stolen from their families, money that the Department of Health and Human Services didn't have in the accounts dedicated to the purpose.
So it's been taking money from other accounts, more than $200 million so far. That means public health programs are losing funding. Which is alarming people like Emily Holubowich, executive director of the Coalition for Health Funding. "We have a public health emergency like Ebola, Zika, hurricanes—except this one is man-made," she told Politico. "We should not be taking discretionary funding away from programs that need it."
It's creating bipartisan headaches among lawmakers.
"This is not a policy we should be pursuing," said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the Labor-HHS-Education subcommittee chairman, criticizing the administration's plan to split families at the border.
“We have sent letters demanding answers with regards to the costs ... [and] we have received no answers from OMB or from HHS," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), subcommittee ranking member. "The Trump administration is withholding information from the Congress."
Alex Azar, the HHS Secretary, isn't helping matters much with painfully tone-deaf statements like this one to CNN last week, saying that HHS's caring for the children "one of the great acts of American generosity and charity." Yes, he really said that. Making sure children that you kidnapped and jailed have food and shelters is "generosity and charity." What he'll say to the people who we can't afford to help when Zika hits, or after the next massive hurricane, or if Ebola breaks out again, who knows?