Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shut down Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) during a House Financial Services Committee hearing this week as she tried to claim that housing inflation has worsened under the Trump administration.
During the hearing, Waters repeatedly suggested that home prices and rents are rising under the Trump administration, claiming tariffs are responsible.
In response, Bessent cut into Waters claims and called out the immigration policies of the Biden administration that coincided with record housing inflation. He said:
Housing, especially for working Americans, a Wharton study has shown that the mass unfettered immigration, adding 10-20 million new people demanding housing, Congresswoman, is what caused a great deal of housing inflation for working Americans. You and the Biden administration should be ashamed.
Indeed, a recent study by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania found a strong correlation between immigration and housing — as have prior studies for the last two decades.
Partially thanks to fierce interior immigration enforcement, whereby an estimated 2.2 million illegal aliens have been deported or self-deported from the United States, rents hit a 4-year low in January.
Bessent, as well as Vice President JD Vance, says it is basic supply and demand, proving that when millions of foreign nationals are added to the U.S. population at a rapid rate, home prices and rents will skyrocket as more buyers compete for limited housing stock.
In December, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published this month that Biden’s importing of millions of migrants drove up prices for Americans who are low-income but who do not receive public assistance.
“One key cause of elevated worst-case needs is immigration. Between 2021 and 2024, the foreign-born population of the United States increased by more than 6 million—the largest such increase over such a short period in American history,” the HUD probe found.
“This immigration-driven increase in households has contributed to a significant increase in housing demand, thus driving up housing prices,” the HUD probe continues. “In fact, in some markets, immigration has accounted for nearly all of the increase in housing demand in recent years.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.
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