Word is that the $500 million for health care for illegal children that the Democrats added to the budget during conference committee has been dropped. Also, yesterday afternoon, Bill Bradley was reporting on his New West blog that the governor has dropped his plans to increase the Healthy Families programs by $23 million (some of this spending would have been used to provide care for illegal immigrant children).
Writers on this website, talk radio hosts and others in the grassroots rightly expressed outrage about the health care spending for illegal immigrants and effectively killed the proposals. Now it is time for the Democrats and the mainstream press to hear the same amount of outrage about the roughly $150 million the Democrats cut from public safety spending Schwarzenegger included in his May Budget Revision. Senator Chuck Poochgian has been especially vocal on this issue, but he needs support from folks inside and outside of the Capitol.
We are now one week past the constitutional deadline that requires the Legislature to pass a state budget for the upcoming fiscal year and just nine days away from when that budget is supposed to go into effect. As I understand it, everyone is banking on the budget to be fully baked by early July because Fabian Nunez has World Cup tickets for July 7-10 (for a mere $25K, you too can join the Speaker, but you have to pony up for the airfare).
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