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A coalition of special interests will ask LA County voters to raise the sales tax half a percent next week to make up for Gavin Newsom’s poor planning onhealth care spending.
LA voters will decide the fate of theEssential Services Restoration Act, a half-cent county sales tax, on June 2. The tax will supposedly raise $1 billion annually through 2031.
The official pitch is that it will make up for federal Medicaid cuts from HR1, President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Actually, federal spending on Medicaid (known asMedi-Calin the Golden State) has continued to rise after HR1 — just at a lower rate.
Governor Newsom’s January budget projects Medi-Cal spending of$222.4 billion for 2026-27—up from$196.7 billion in 2025-26, and more than double itspre-COVID level. Medi-Cal now consumes roughly 20% of California’s General Fund, and more than 40% of total state spending.
On Newsom’s watch, full-scope Medi-Cal was extended to undocumented young adults in 2020; illegal aliens aged 50 and older in 2022; and the remaining 26-to-49 cohort on January 1, 2024.
By 2025 the math broke. The Newsom administration cited Medi-Cal spending on undocumented immigrants running$2.7 billion above projectionsas the reason for a course correction. New enrollment for undocumented adults was frozen on January 1, 2026, and premiums for existing beneficiaries are supposed to begin in 2027.
To reduce the rate of spending growth, in Medi-Cal and in other states’ Medicaid programs, the Republican controlled Congress made some commonsense reforms.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act requires twice yearly eligibility checks for all beneficiaries, for example. It also adds a community engagement requirement under which some beneficiaries must work, study, or volunteer at least twenty hours per week to remain eligible.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
