Fire-Ravaged California Spending Nearly $10 Billion on Health Care for Illegal Aliens
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California, which failed to prevent the spread of wildfires in Los Angeles last month and is struggling to repair the damage, is set to spend nearly $10 billion on health care for illegal aliens, according to a nonpartisan state analyst.
Fox News reported Thursday:
Guadalupe Manriquez, the California Department of Finance program budget manager, told the state Assembly Budget Committee Monday the state is “spending $9.5 billion total funds” to “cover undocumented individuals in Medi-Cal” in the current year.
Manriquez explained that this is a “revised number based on the governor’s budget-updated estimates,” adding the earlier figure was from the earlier “budget act.”
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“The state is shelling out $9.5 billion on healthcare for illegal immigrants while emergency rooms overflow, hospitals teeter on the brink and working Californians struggle to see a doctor,” [California Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher] continued. “Rather than making responsible choices, leaders are raiding the rainy-day fund to keep the spending spree going. This isn’t just a budget crisis — it’s a complete failure of leadership.”
The City of Los Angeles cut the fire department’s budget last year, and failed to pre-deploy firefighters ahead of the Palisades Fire due to a reluctance to pay overtime. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) also trimmed planned increases in spending on wildfire prevention.
Newsom recently traveled to Washington to seek federal aid for addressing the impact of the recent fires. He also signed $50 million in new spending to fight President Donald Trump’s policies.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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