* A good catch by CNI’s Ben Szalinski in his pretty darned good budget backgrounder story…

Two specific programs that have drawn Republican ire provide health benefits for noncitizens regardless of legal residency status. The Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults and Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors provide Medicaid-style benefits to noncitizens age 42 and older.

The programs unexpectedly stretched the state budget in spring 2023 when costs were projected to potentially reach $1 billion. Lawmakers enacted new restrictions, including giving the governor authority to pause enrollment, and projected program costs are now at $558 million in the current fiscal year. Enrollment in the programs, meanwhile, has remained paused.

Click here for the info source.

* More…

The state also spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years on migrants arriving on buses sent by Texas and other Republican-led states, but that problem appeared to largely subside in 2024. […]

Revenue is set to remain relatively flat next year, in part because one-time sources are disappearing. Federal pandemic aid has ended, and the Department of Revenue underwent a “true-up” process to fix a miscalculation of “overpayments” to local governments, which ended up boosting current year revenues that won’t carry over to next year.

GOMB’s report also reflected spending increases that are required by law in FY26, such as $350 million more to K-12 education, $440 million more for pensions, $1.1 billion more for health care as one-time federal reimbursements expire, and general spending increases throughout state government.

Those migrant costs will likely go down in the new budget. And I would expect that at least some programs which were benefiting from one-time federal reimbursements will be discontinued or scaled back.

As we all learned during the Rauner budget impasse, parts of the budget cannot be controlled by the state. But some can.