California will spend close to $10 billion on healthcare for illegal aliens, even as it struggles to come to recover from devastating wildfires that were exacerbated by state and local spending cuts.
According to Fox News, the state will spend $9.5 billion on healthcare costs for illegal aliens in the current year.
Guadalupe Manriquez, program budget manager of the California Department of Finance, told the state’s Assembly Budget Committee that the figure was a “revised number based on the governor’s budget-updated estimates.”
The admission was greeted with outrage by opposition politicians in California.
“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 said.
“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.”
In the aftermath of January’s massive fires, which could be one of the most expensive natural disasters in American history, there has been intense focus on official failings, including budget cuts and mismanagement.
California Governor Gavin Newsom approved cuts of over $100 million to the state firefighting budget in 2024. LA Mayor Karen Bass was trying to close 16 fire stations the week before the fires broke out. It’s also been reported the city’s water chief Janisse Quiñones was well aware the Santa Ynez reservoir was empty and disconnected, denying the city millions of gallons of water, and that large numbers of hydrants in the city were broken.
Estimates now suggest that the fires could cost well upwards of $150 billion, or around 4% of the state’s entire GDP.
According to recent revelations in The Los Angeles Times,the Los Angeles Fire Department could have pre-deployed ten fire trucks to Pacific Palisades ahead of the massive fires that devastated the historic neighbourhood, killing at least 12.
According to reports, the Department chose not to pre-deploy fire trucks because of budget cuts that made fire chiefs reluctant to pay overtime.
Fire trucks took 18 minutes to respond to the first 911 call about the fire, at which point the wind was already fanning the flames dangerously, making containment impossible.
According to the LA Times, “Crews from those engines [pre-deployed in the Palisades] might have spotted the fire soon after it started, when it was still small enough to give them a chance to control it…
“Instead, according to publicly available information, the crews nearest to the fire were based at Stations 23 and 69, both on Sunset Boulevard, about three to four miles from the Piedra Morada address on a street map.”