Illinois, a sanctuary state, with Democrat super majorities in both the House and Senate, a Democrat governor, and all state office holders who are Democrats, continuously imposes higher taxes on its citizens. They are chasing away taxpayers while inviting non-citizens to live off the public dole. The Democrats need these replacements so they can keep congressional seats after chasing away all their former voters.

(As a side note: it is inexplicable that congressional seats are determined by the number of bodies in a state instead of number of citizens. It is an incentive to disobey federal immigration laws by states like Illinois, New York, and California who are losing citizens because of the progressive, leftwing policies they implement.)

Illinois has the most underfunded pensions in the country, at over $140 billion. The liability continues to grow. Illinois also has massive underfunded liabilities for current and retired employees health insurance.

So what did Illinois Democrats do when the debt hit a crisis level and people fled the state? They decided (in 2020) that it was time to entice tens of thousands of foreigners to come to Illinois by telling them they would pay their health bills.

Here’s how it’s going:

Audit: Illinois’ non citizen health care programs far outstripped original cost estimates

When progressive lawmakers first pushed for the creation of the Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors, or HBIS, program for noncitizens aged 65 and older in the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, officials relied on advocates’ $2 million cost estimate for the program’s first year. Though that projection was later doubled to $4 million as the program was being set up in the latter half of 2020, the actual cost ended up at more than $67 million after HBIS began accepting enrollees in December of that year.

But while actual costs for the seniors’ program in its first three years – $412 million – ended up being 84% higher than original estimates, the price tag for the expanded program for adults aged 44 to 64 was many times larger.

The Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults, or HBIA, program covered noncitizen adults age 55 to 64 and was later expanded to cover those as young as 44. It cost $485.3 million over its first two years – roughly 284% more than the combined original estimate for both programs.

They started by providing healthcare to seniors, and pretended the cost of the new program would be only $2 million—but the cost for the first year was $67 million. They missed the estimate by…thirty times. If a CEO at a private company, or its employees or consultants screwed up by this much they would have been fired, but government employees and politicians seem to be special.

So, what do Democrats do when a program blows through the cost estimates by this much? They expand the program, and the total costs of this $2 million program explode to over $1.6 billion in less than five years: “Illinois Probed Over $1.6 Billion Health-Care Scheme for Illegal Migrants”.

The reason that the U.S is $36 trillion in debt and that Illinois is so broke is that once a spending program starts, it is essentially impossible to eliminate because someone will always be impacted, and if politicians propose cutting or freezing spending, they are derided as uncaring people.

Illinois citizens are so unhappy with the way Illinois is run, that almost one third of the counties would like to secede and join Indiana, which is much more appreciative of and friendly toward its businesses and citizens:

Indiana wants to absorb 33 Illinois counties that voted to secede: ‘Join us’

According to Huston, seven Illinois counties voted in November to leave the state. Upon further investigation, it was determined by Huston that 33 counties in total voted to secede, which is roughly one-third of Illinois' counties.

Historically, Illinois was once part of Indiana from 1800 to 1809 before being divided into a separate state.

It seems very odd that two of the top potential Democrat candidates for president are governors whose policies are chasing away businesses and citizens, especially taxpayers. Why would anyone think that governors who are overseeing drastic shrinkage in their own states would be good leaders of our country?

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.