Think of it this way: Federal welfare and entitlement reform that lowers the welfare consumed by the hypothetical native-born American above from $1,500 to $200 a month would be a monumental achievement. Scholars would write books, academic papers, and a million blog posts and news stories about it. American taxpayers would save money, and the scale of welfare in this country would shrink to a level so low that European stereotypes about American state stinginess would start to match reality. But you’d never know it happened if you relied on Camarota’s method of measurement.

TAX. WEALTH. OUT. OF. EXISTENCE!

Thought I remembered the Cato Institute being very biased, then found their angle in the last few paragraphs:

Nativists have long been skeptical of these methods because, we suspect, they want to use the existence of the welfare state as an argument for reducing immigration. We propose a simpler and more popular way to resolve that complaint: Use immigration as an argument to reduce welfare. Even though immigrants use less, we can still make sure they use even less.

Reality has a well known liberal bias