SOONER OR LATER YOU RUN OUT OF OTHER PEOPLES' MONEY.

If a country has secure borders, a sanctuary city can engage in cheap virtue signalling. "Declaring yourself a sanctuary city costs nothing, as long as you have a national government that is protecting its borders. Let the national government change its policies, and all of a sudden, accusing state governors who are bearing the brunt of the illegal crossings as 'racist' doesn't do anything for the material or moral condition of the people who request transportation to Chicago."  There wasn't any room in the inn in January, and there wasn't any money, and the border state governors continue to call the sanctuary cities' bluffs.  "Ballooning cost of insuring undocumented immigrants complicating state budget negotiations."

The $49.6 billion budget Gov. J.B. Pritzker introduced in February estimated the cost of a program that provides state-funded health insurance to adult immigrants who are in the country without legal permission at $220 million.

Just three months later, that estimate has grown fivefold, swelling to $1.1 billion and threatening to blow a hole in the Democratic governor’s proposal for the budget year that begins July 1, the first of his second term.

Provided? By whom?

At the same time, revenue flowing to the state appears to be slowing, putting further pressure on Pritzker and the Democratic-controlled legislature as they try to assemble a spending plan that continues the financial progress made during the past four years. The General Assembly’s spring session is scheduled to adjourn May 19.

Illinois created a program in 2020 that provides Medicaid-style coverage to immigrants 65 and older who are in the country without legal permission or who have green cards but haven’t completed a five-year waiting period and are therefore ineligible for the traditional health insurance program for the poor, which is jointly funded by the federal government. The program has been expanded twice, now covering those 42 and older.

Even as enrollment has far outstripped expectations, some Democratic lawmakers are pushing to further expand coverage, opening the program to people 19 and older, which the Pritzker administration estimates would cost an additional $380 million in the first year.

Catch that passive formulation,  "appears to be slowing?"  There's no more printed money coming from the Jarrett regency, and the state's tax policies put productive people behind domestic, and now immigrant, public charges.  Now batting, reality.  "The financial pressure is exposing tensions between Democrats’ open-arms stance on immigration and the limited resources available in a state that has only recently begun to stabilize its chronically shaky finances."  Heck, the Combine and its enablers in regime media can't even throw the race card any more.

Advocates who’ve backed the program and are seeking further expansion question the accuracy of the state’s cost estimates and are pushing back on what they see as anti-immigrant sentiment, particularly among Republican lawmakers.

Pritzker, who has signed the health care program expansions into law and trumpeted them in news releases, now appears to be distancing himself from the effort, which a spokeswoman described as “a legislative initiative that relied on independent outside cost projections.”

“Every balanced budget that has passed is negotiated with the General Assembly and includes priorities the governor lays out in his budget address and the priorities of lawmakers in the General Assembly,” Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said in an email. “As the program was implemented and real costs were calculated it became clear the program was going to cost much more than what the advocates had predicted.”

The state's tax take is falling, and as surely as Lori Lightfoot will say something rude, it's likely that Springfield politicians will look for ways to raise taxes.

The governor’s office wouldn’t say how it proposes to address the exploding costs of the immigrant health care program, or whether options such as closing enrollment in the program or raising taxes to pay for it are on the table.

“The administration is working with the General Assembly to discuss the path forward for this legislative initiative,” Abudayyeh said.

As for the proposed expansion of the program, Pritzker’s “focus remains on investing in priorities he outlined during his budget address,” she said.

The popularity of the program, despite some shortcomings, among a population that has few other options for health care coverage perhaps shouldn’t have been a surprise.

When the program was introduced for those 65 and older in 2020, the budget for the entire year was spent in the first month, according to a briefing the Department of Healthcare and Family Services gave lawmakers earlier this spring.

That's the same year the governor shut the state down, and made it harder for productive people to pay their own way, let alone pay for all the dependents the Democrats enable.  Now there isn't any more money printing in Washington, and big chunks of the disposable income Illinois used to tax is being earned elsewhere.  The wishful thinking goes on all the same.

[Healthy Illinois's Tovia] Siegel also noted that the state appears to be leaving federal money on the table by not getting reimbursement for qualifying emergency health services provided to immigrants without documents. Indeed, Healthcare and Family Services Director Theresa Eagleson told the Senate committee that the department believes it will be able to recover about $100 million or more in federal cash to help with next year’s outlay on the state’s health care program for undocumented immigrants.

It's still other peoples' money, and it still will run out.