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Cash-Strapped California Inches Closer To Handing Taxpayer Home Loans To Illegal Migrants

Published

6 months ago

7 minute read

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Hopkins

 

California lawmakers are one step closer to making hundreds of millions of taxpayer-funded home loans available to residents living in the country illegally.

Democrats on the California Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously approved AB 1840 to move forward on Thursday, according to an official vote tally of the legislation. The bill has one last chance to be struck down on the Senate floor, where Democrats wield majority power, before it lands on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

The legislation seeks to amend the California Dream For All Shared Appreciation Loan program, an initiative launched last year that provides first-time homebuyers with a loan of up to 20% of the house’s purchase price for down payment or closing cost. If passed and signed into law, illegal migrants living in California would be eligible to apply for a piece of the pie.

“Once again, California has chosen to prioritize illegal immigration and fiscal irresponsibility over the needs of its citizens, all while facing a $60 billion deficit that will ultimately be passed onto taxpayers,” San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“California is in dire financial straits, yet lawmakers continue to prioritize programs that incentivize illegal immigration and strain local resources,” Desmond continued. “Expanding this program to include illegal immigrants is not just another handout — it’s a massive overreach that shifts the financial burden onto law-abiding taxpayers.”

These taxpayer-funded home loans are interest-free and borrowers are not required to dole out monthly payments, making the program incredibly popular with California residents.

When applications for the $300 million program first opened up in May 2023 — offering interest-free loans to roughly 2,300 middle and lower-income homebuyers — the money ran out in less than two weeks, according to the LA Times. State officials have since tightened eligibility for the program, requiring that at least one of the applicants be a first-generation home buyer and replacing the first-come-first-serve model with a lottery.

Despite California struggling to cope with a budget deficit in the tens of billions of dollars, and availability for the program incredibly tight already, one state lawmaker felt the loan program wasn’t inclusive enough.

Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, a Democrat from Fresno, first introduced AB 1840 in January, with the goal of broadening the definition of “first-time home buyer” to include illegal immigrants. The lawmaker argued in March that the “social and economic benefits of homeownership should be available to everyone,” according to a local news KTLA. Arambula did not immediately respond to the the DCNF’s request for comment.

The legislation has since easily passed the Democrat-dominated California Assembly and sailed through the Senate Appropriations Committee — with opposition exclusively relegated to GOP lawmakers.

“California’s budget deficit continues to grow and Democratic lawmakers are so out of touch with everyday Californians that they and are quite literally taking money away from law-abiding citizens, their own constituents, and handing it over as a free gift to people who broke federal law to cross the border illegally,” California Sen. Brian Dahle stated to the DCNF.

“There’s no accountability and transparency when it comes to the Democrats’ spending sprees, and it’s unfortunate because many Californians see homeownership as nothing more than an illusion at this point,” Dahle continued.

California is experiencing a massive budget shortfall.

State lawmakers in June approved a budget that slashed spending and temporarily raised taxes on businesses in an effort to shore up a nearly $50 billion budget deficit, according to the Associated Press. The dire financial situation marks a far cry from the more than $100 billion surplus the state enjoyed roughly two years ago, but those revenue spikes proved only temporary as rising unemployment, inflation and a slowing of the tech industry has battered California pocketbooks.

The state’s deficit was roughly $ 32 billion in 2023, which grew to more than $46 billion earlier this year and is now around $60 billion, according to California Republicans — drawing questions as to why lawmakers would open up a highly-coveted loan program to a large swath of the population that does not hold legal status.

Nearly two million illegal migrants live in California, according to data published by the Pew Research Center in July.

It’s not immediately clear if Newsom will sign the legislation. When reached for comment, a spokesperson said the governor’s office does not typically comment on pending legislation, adding that the governor would “evaluate the legislation on its merits” should it reach his desk.

Approval of AB 1840 came on the same day that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign announced she would be unveiling a proposal similar to her home state’s current program: $25,000 in down payment support for first-time homebuyers, including greater support for first-generation homeowners.

It’s not clear if the proposal from Harris — who has recently attempted to cast herself as more of a border hawk — would explicitly exclude illegal immigrants. Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

California Republicans, in the meantime, are left balking at their own state’s legislative actions.

“Many legal California residents can’t afford a home in their own state,” California Sen. Brian Jones said to the DCNF. He is one of only two GOP members on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“Instead of addressing the housing crisis, radical Democrat lawmakers want to help illegal immigrants buy houses with the gift of taxpayer funds,” Jones continued. “With a $62 billion budget deficit, we need to focus on preserving essential government functions, not unfair political spending for those here illegally.”

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Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy

Published on February 22, 2025

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.

According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.

Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.

While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.

The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.

Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.

Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.

Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute
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Business

‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`

Published on February 22, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”

The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”

Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.

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