RUTHFULLY YOURS

Say good-night, Gracie:

The United States will increase its cap on the number of refugees it admits and resettles to 85,000 in the coming year and 100,000 in the following year, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Sunday. The additional refugees, up from 70,000 in the current fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, will come from countries around the world. But the increase largely reflects the 10,000 Syrian refugees that the White House has promised to resettle over the next 12 months.

Naturally, this is being couched in Alinskyite terms: making the enemy (us) live up to their own book of rules.

“This step is in keeping with America’s best tradition as a land of second chances and a beacon of hope,” Kerry said in announcing the increase during a visit to Berlin to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis with his German counterpart, Frank Walter Steinmeier. Even before Syrian refugees began streaming into Europe in recent weeks, the State Department had been considering a modest increase of about 5,000 refugees, including more from Congo, where human rights abuses are rampant. At the end of every fiscal year, the State Department announces the new target number for refugees.

The Emperor is doing this on his own toot, as usual. Congress actually could stop it, using the (apparently now imaginary) “power of the purse” — but of course it won’t.

Though the administration can unilaterally set a numerical goal for the refugees it wants to accept, it is up to Congress to agree to fund their resettlement. In the current fiscal year, it cost $1.1 billion to bring 70,000 refugees to the United States, put them through an orientation program run by refugee charities and have them dispersed around the country. At a similar level of funding, the increase would cost at least an extra $200 million.

One of the reasons it is so expensive is that every refugee must undergo extensive background checks under security measures enacted after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Those checks have been taking 18 to 24 months for the Syrians, according to State Department figures.

This from the same folks who brought us Maj. Hasan and the Tsarnaev brothers — what could possibly go wrong? But hey — it could be worse:

The goals announced by Kerry still far short of the 100,000 or more Syrian refugees that some members of Congress and humanitarian agencies have urged the administration to admit.

The home-front war has now been joined, but the Stupid Party is too stupid to know it.