Newsom Can’t Memory-Hole What He Did to California

 The American Spectator   "He gave all illegal immigrants free health care — and it did not go well." 

"But Newsom isn’t just trying to deflect responsibility for the fiscal disaster he has inflicted on California through sheer irresponsibility. He is also trying to distort the kind of governor he has been."

Spectator.org

""Last year, California, to great fanfare, became the first state to fund free health care for all its illegal immigrants — which totals about 1.1 million people.

"California Gov. Gavin Newsom framed the policy as a great moral achievement. “Through this expansion,” he said, “we’re making sure families and communities across California are healthier, stronger, and able to get the care they need when they need it.”

"There was just one problem. When Newsom rolled out the policy, California was facing years of budget deficits amounting to a shortfall of tens of billions of dollars, according to the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.

"Despite the budget holes — which Newsom patched with accounting maneuvers and withdrawals from the state’s rainy-day fund — California liberals were adamant that the health care policy was a moral necessity. For instance, California state Senator Maria Elena Durazo called the policy a “historic investment” that “speaks to California’s commitment to health care as a human right.”

"Well, who could have guessed it, but it turns out California could not actually afford universal free health care for illegal immigrants. The policy cost billions more than anticipated and spiraled California into an even bigger deficit hole.

"So last week, Newsom proposed as part of his May budget revision that the state freeze the enrollment of illegal immigrants in the state’s Medicaid system beginning next year and that the state begin charging illegal immigrants — in two years’ time — $100 a month to stay in the program. Free dental care for illegal immigrants would also be rolled back.

"It was an admission that the free-health-care-for-illegal-immigrants policy had been fiscally untenable — and a stunning admission at that, given the extent to which Newsom’s administration had trumpeted the policy as an achievement that should lead the rest of the country to follow its moral bravery." . . .