Gavin Newsom Reports California Has $45.7 billion Surplus After $26 Billion from Feds

California Governor Gavin Newsom reported Monday in his annual state budget proposal that the state expects a $45.7 billion surplus — thanks partly to $26 billion received from President Joe Biden’s so-called coronavirus “relief” bill.

Newsom announced the surplus Monday in a $286.4 billion budget, including spending that “will make California the first state in the nation to offer universal access to healthcare coverage for all state residents, regardless of immigration status.”

Health care dwarfs all other priorities in Newsom’s proposed budget, accounting for $217.5 billion in spending, over 75% of the total. The budget declares that the state’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, will be available to illegal aliens by Jan. 1, 2024.
As Breitbart News noted:

The cost of providing health insurance to all illegal aliens in California would cost taxpayers about $2.4 billion every year in addition to the billions in costs that taxpayers in the state already pay to provide health insurance to certain groups of illegal aliens.

As Breitbart News reported last year, Newsom opened the state’s taxpayer-funded Medi-Cal program to about 235,000 illegal aliens who are 50-years-old or older. In 2019, thanks to Newsom, California became the first state in the nation to open its taxpayer-funded health benefits to illegal aliens up to 26 years old.

Newsom is also proposing to spend more on wildfire prevention, mental health for the homeless, and climate change.

California is receiving $26 billion from President Biden’s “American Rescue Plan,” on top of billions in federal spending already received by the state during the coronavirus pandemic. Democrats directed billions of dollars in deficit spending to “blue” states, ostensibly because the pandemic had strained their budgets and deprived them of money for essential services.

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 recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.