Sen. Ricardo Lara and Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León discuss the state budget that passed this week. (Photo courtesy of Sen. Lara's office.)
Calling it one of the “best” budgets the state has ever had, California Gov. Jerry Brown said the $167.6 billion dollar budget the legislature passed Tuesday would pump more money into child care and education, pay down the state’s debt by $1.9 billion and provide health care for its undocumented children.
“This is just one step and we need to do more,” Brown said during a press conference, referring to the $40 million budgetary allocation for providing health insurance to an estimated 170,000 undocumented children in the state through Medi-Cal – California’s name for Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income people.
A jubilant Lara noted that the budget deal “affirms our commitment to embrace and integrate our immigrant community, to lead where the federal government has failed and to acknowledge the hard work and sacrifice of a community that contributes billions of dollars” to the state’s economy.
He called the $40 million allocation a “modest investment in health care that will be transformational in the lives of not only children,” but also their families and the community as a whole.
The governor’s remark that more needs to be done, including how to address the low Medi-Cal reimbursement rates – among the lowest in the nation -- will be discussed in a special session in a few weeks.
[For more of this story go to http://newamericamedia.org/201...-in-state-budget.php]
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