SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A budget deal between Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders would make California the first in the nation to offer state-subsidized health care to children who are in the country illegally.
The $115.4 billion agreement announced Tuesday is expected to win easy approval from the Senate and Assembly before the fiscal year begins July 1, and its immigrant health care provisions were touted by its backers as a necessity in the face of federal inaction.
“While Washington dithers because they can’t get things done, we need immigration reform,” Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles. “The reality is many of these children, and they are children, require some kind of health care and they receive it in the emergency room.
The cost to taxpayers would be $40 million in the new fiscal year and grow to $132 million a year once fully implemented, numbers that had Republicans objecting and warning that it won’t help immigrants get access to doctors because of the shortage of providers who accept Medi-Cal, the state’s health program for the poor.
Anti-immigration advocates said it was yet another move from Brown — like a bill providing driver’s licenses that took effect this year — that is “extremely generous” toward people who enter the country illegally.
“Gov. Brown continues to sign laws that incentivize more illegal immigration,” said Joe Guzzardi, spokesman for Californians for Population Stabilization. “I can’t really see what reason there would be not to come to California. I can get a job, I can get tuition, I can now get medical care for my children.”
But the California Immigrant Policy Center called the move a “ray of hope” for many in the state.
“California will take a key first step toward recognizing that health care truly is a human right,” the group’s Executive Director Reshma Shamasunder said in a statement.
The budget deal also sends billions of dollars more to public schools and universities, adds spaces for state-funded child care and preschool, and creates the state’s first income tax credit for the working poor.
The revised spending plan is far closer to Brown’s $115 billion proposal in May than the $117.5 billion version approved a day earlier by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. It adds $61 million in spending above his May plan.
“All in all, I think the people of California can be proud of the work that’s been done,” Brown said.
Brown also announced he is calling two special sessions to address how California pays for roads, highways and other infrastructure and Medi-Cal. There is a $5.7 billion annual backlog in road repairs, the administration said.
But Republicans warned that the special sessions could result in new taxes on gasoline, cigarettes and health care. “Given the $14 billion of unanticipated tax revenues the state has just received, it is difficult to understand why their starting point is to impose billions of dollars in additional taxes on hard-working Californians,” said Senate Minority Leader, Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar.
