Liberals are siding with corporate America over the nation’s workers in their promotion of mass immigration, a key tool in keeping wages down, Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarota told lawmakers this week.

During a hearing before the House Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee, led by Chairman Bob Good (R-VA), Camarota said liberals — such as President Joe Biden — have broken with historical precedent in recent decades to defend the interests of corporations against American workers when it comes to national immigration policy.

“Historically, progressives from Eugene Debs to A. Philip Randolph, they got that if you have lots of immigration, you tend to push down wages,” Camarota said:

Unfortunately, a lot of progressives are lying with corporate America on this — they want low wages. And they’re perfectly happy to ignore this crisis of non-work among working-age people, particularly the U.S.-born. Immigrants haven’t suffered this same problem. It’s particularly U.S.-born men without a college degree and we know it’s a social disaster. [Emphasis added]

Even former President Obama, in his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope, admitted that illegal immigration threatened the wages of America’s working class:

"The number of immigrants added to the labor force every year is of a magnitude not seen in this country for over a century."
— Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope pic.twitter.com/R10Np1r2m1

— NumbersUSA (@NumbersUSA) August 30, 2020

As Breitbart News reported, Camarota estimates that more than 44 million native-born Americans remain on the labor market sidelines — not including the millions of native-born Americans counted in monthly unemployment figures.

“If we curtailed immigration and enforced our law, we would be forced to draw these people back which will not be easy … less immigration would be enormously helpful but it is not the only issue,” Camarota said:

One of the things immigration is doing is holding down wages, there’s some crowding out … it’s letting us ignore this problem [of non-work]. If we didn’t have access to all this immigrant labor, employers and the American people … would demand that we try to reinstill the value of work. Raising wages would be one of the most important things to make work more attractive. Immigration lets us not do any of that, including the current flow of massive illegal immigration. [Emphasis added]

Read more.

In a classic move by those on the left — democrats, socialists, and everyone in between with seemingly no grasp of what sparks inflation — championed the Biden administration’s move in 2021 to increase food stamp spending by the most in history, hiking benefits by an average of 27%. 

In 2022, the Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) spending hit a record high of $119 billion, a sixfold increase over the last two decades. In 2019, taxpayers were on the hook for $4.5 billion per month on food stamp benefits. By December 2022, monthly food stamp spending soared to $11 billion. 

According to findings from the government watchdog Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), previewed by Fox News, the administration’s massive expansion of food stamp benefits could be responsible for a 15% spike in grocery store prices. 

FGA called Biden’s rush to increase SNAP benefits an “unlawful expansion—which bypassed Congress—will cost taxpayers $250 billion over the next decade and has heavily contributed to soaring grocery prices.”  

“Congress should repeal President Biden’s unlawful food stamp expansion and ensure this type of executive overreach cannot happen again. In doing so, Congress could save taxpayers more than $193 billion over the next decade,” it added. 

The good news is the emergency allotments expired earlier this year, but food stamp spending remains $8.6 billion in March. The Congressional Budget Office estimates SNAP spending will cost taxpayers nearly $1.1 trillion over the next decade. 

“USDA cooked their books to hike food stamp benefits by 27% — the largest permanent increase in program history. And they bypassed Congress to do it,” said Jonathan Ingram, Vice President of Policy and Research at the Foundation for Government Accountability.

Ingram noted, “Data show the Biden administration’s overreach led to massive spikes in grocery prices. They’re feeding inflation, not stopping hunger.”

The index for food at home (groceries) has skyrocketed ever since Biden increased SNAP benefits. 

As food inflation soared, Biden’s officials, seemingly detached from economic reality, pointed the finger at food companies for raging food inflation. 

Remember this?

If FGA is correct, this is another sign that ‘Bidenomics’ has been a disaster for low/mid-tier consumers drowning in inflation. 

It’s one giant EBT party…

This post was originally published at Zero Hedge

After self-destructing in the name of signaling virtue, Bud Light is looking at a permanent loss of nearly 25% of its business, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Mitch Collett in a recent Barron‘s article.

“We believe recent underperformance implies a permanent reduction in ABI’s U.S. business,” writes Collett, referring to Anheuser-Busch InBev, the parent company of Bud Light. “Our proprietary survey data suggests these headwinds are likely to fade even if we do not expect the U.S. business ever to fully recover from its current challenges.”

Data gathered by Deutsche Bank suggests that 24% of Bud Light consumers no longer purchase the brand, while another 18% are buying less of it.

“Taken together, our survey data shows that Bud Light as a brand faces significant challenges—particularly with older consumers. However, we believe the forward-looking data sets imply that the challenges will at least partially fade,” wrote Collett, who actually upgraded shares of AB InBev to “buy” from “hold,” with a new price target of $65.92, up from $64.83.

That said, another analyst, Evercore’s Robert Ottenstein, said Bud Light will “permanently lose” between 15 and 20% of its volume, after which “declines will resume at about the average rate of the prior 10 years.”

“Budweiser will also see a similar pattern, with consumers lost in 2022 not coming back,” he continued in a note highlighted by Yahoo Finance in which quotes Collett as saying Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch are “at the end of the tunnel” of the controversy.

In May, HSBC downgraded the stock to “hold” over its “Bud Light crisis,” adding that there may be “deeper problems” at the company.

“Is ABI’s leadership getting the brand culture transformation right? It’s mixed,” he said. “At Ambev, we think the answer is ‘yes’; in the U.S., we think it’s ‘no.’ The way this Bud Light crisis came about a month ago, management’s response to it and the loss of unprecedented volume and brand relevance raises many questions.”

More via the Epoch Times;

Since its ill-fated promotional exercise in early April with Mulvaney, a transgender TikTok influencer, Bud Light has seen its weekly sales decline. Recent data from Bump Williams Consulting and Nielsen IQ show that for the week ending on June 10, Bud Light’s year-over-year sales have declined by 26.8 percent, representing the worst week so far.

And for the month of May, Constellation Brands-owned Modelo Especial was the No. 1-selling brand in the United States, outpacing Bud Light, which fell to No. 2, industry data show.

Bump Williams, chief of the eponymous consulting company, told the New York Post on June 21: “This was a tough week for Bud Light and other beer brands” that are owned by Anheuser-Busch, including Budweiser. Sales of Budweiser were down by 10 percent, Natural Light was down by 2.3 percent, and Michelob Ultra was down by 2.4 percent.

Anheuser-Busch’s CEO, Michel Doukeris, told investors last month that he believes that online “misinformation” was the primary reason for the sales numbers, and he asserted that it was just “one can” that was produced with Mulvaney’s face on it and appeared to deny that there was a partnership. However, Mulvaney posted on social media that there was a partnership.

The can drew the ire of multiple celebrities and conservative influencers on Twitter. Some suggested that consumers boycott the brand in a bid to send a message to corporations who may be pursuing a “woke” leftist agenda.

An executive with Anheuser-Busch recently spoke out about the boycott as he got an award during the Cannes Lions International Festival in southern France.

“It’s tough to see the controversial and divisive debates that have been happening in the U.S. in the last couple of weeks involving lots of brands and companies, including and especially Bud Light,” Anheuser-Busch’s global chief marketing officer, Marcel Marcondes, told the Cannes Lions International Festival, according to an Ad Age report. “It’s tough exactly because what we do is all about bringing people together.”

Marketing Pivot

With summer officially starting last week, Bud Light pivoted and launched a new promotional campaign. But that, too, was derided on social media, with some demanding that the company apologize for its promotional efforts with Mulvaney.

Responding to the latest ad, podcast host Liz Wheeler wrote on Twitter that the company was trying to whitewash the past two months of controversy.

“None of this is funny until & unless you apologize for using Dylan Mulvaney—a man pretending to be a woman—as your spokesperson. It’s insulting that you think an ad about summer will make us forget our principles. The boycott continues,” she wrote in a post.

Anheuser-Busch didn’t respond to a request from The Epoch Times for comment by press time.

This post was originally published at Zero Hedge