AUGUSTA – How much Maine spends helping poor and unemployed immigrants is emerging as a key sticking point in state budget negotiations between Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature.

A top Republican budget-writer and one of the four House lawmakers in the minority on the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee said conservatives are looking to cap current spending in the programs, several of which exist in only a handful of states.

State Rep. Jeff Timberlake, R-Turner, said Republicans are focused on using some of those savings to help the disabled and elderly, including increasing state funding to nursing homes, which in turn would draw down additional federal matching money.

Timberlake said Republicans are especially focused on state and locally funded General Assistance welfare programs and want to end program eligibility for those whom Timberlake called “legal nonresidents.”

The reforms are part of a two-year budget proposal offered by Gov. Paul LePage that have been largely rejected by both Democrats and the Legisature’s Republican Senate majority.

Republicans have argued that the proposals align Maine with the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, which allows asylum-seeking immigrants to legally stay in the U.S. while the federal government determines whether they should be granted immigrant status with permission to work, a process that can take 18 months or more.

The reforms would essentially keep funding flat but would block new enrollees from a set of state welfare programs for immigrants, including a state-funded Social Security program for elderly and disabled immigrants and state-funded Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance programs that Maine created in the late 1990s following the federal law change.

Maine is one of only five states to offer state-funded Social Security Insurance and SNAP programs for immigrants and one of only 19 to offer them TANF.

In 2013, the state spent just over $2.4 million on the programs combined, according to data available from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the programs.

“The biggest sticking point we have in welfare reform is paying General Assistance to legal noncitizens,” Timberlake said. “The biggest issue we have is paying that out and not funding nursing homes.”

Republicans are pushing for about $13 million a year in additional support for nursing homes that care for Medicare patients. They also want to chip away further at waiting lists for DHHS services for disabled Mainers, including those with developmental disabilities and brain injuries.

Timberlake and other Republicans have argued that the state’s priority should focus first on longtime Maine residents and their families before extending benefits to newly arrived immigrants.

Timberlake said central to the Republicans’ case is the fact that state funding for nursing homes receives federal matching funds, but the immigrant welfare programs, created by the state as permitted by federal law, do not.

In May, LePage lamented the financial strain being placed on the state and its cities and towns by the federal goverment’s inability to quickly process asylum-seekers’ applications for immigrant and legal work status.

And while many conservatives are backing away from the use of the word “illegal” when describing the immigrants in question, LePage had no problem using the term. “I don’t know what they don’t get about the word ‘illegal,'” LePage said.

The governor has made clear that he believes as long as the state continues to cover the expense of caring for asylum-seeking immigrants, the federal government will not step to the plate to share in that expense.

Bolstering the Republican cause is a recent court ruling that said the state was not obligated to pay its share of GA benefits paid to asylum-seeking immigrants by the cities of Portland and Westbrook.

In a news release issued Tuesday, LePage again reiterated his view.

“The people of Maine have spoken out for years against welfare for illegal immigrants, and now the courts have spoken,” he said in a prepared statement. “The only people who still support welfare for illegal immigrants are liberal lawmakers in Augusta who are ignoring the Maine people and refusing to include common-sense welfare reforms in the state’s budget.”

Republicans also point to polling conducted in 2014 prior to the election that suggests a majority of Maine voters (58 percent) support them on the issue of not using taxpayer funds to provide welfare to “illegal aliens.”

But Democrats say the wording of that question is misleading, because most of the welfare for immigrants in Maine goes to those who are legally in the U.S.

While specifics of the negotiations between Republicans and Democrats on the issue have not been fully disclosed, Democratic lawmakers are voicing anxiety that a pending budget deal could end eligibility for GA funding for legal asylum-seekers.

According to Democratic lawmakers, as many as 900 families in Portland alone would be left without the resources they need for housing if the Republican proposal to eliminate GA benefits for what the federal government and the Maine DHHS term “nonqualified aliens” goes forward.

According to DHHS, Portland requested state reimbursement for $3.1 million in benefits paid to nonqualified aliens in 2014, which the state is refusing to pay.

During a recent caucus of Democrats, state Rep. Linda Sanborn, D-Gorham, tried to express her concerns that rejecting support for immigrants, many of whom are escaping political persecution and violence in their homelands, was simply contrary to core liberal principles of compassion and fairness.

Sanborn said she and her colleagues have given in on several huge issues within the budget, including lowering the income-tax rate for the state’s wealthiest wage-earners, but to further punish immigrants — often victims of extraordinarily heart-wrenching circumstances — was simply too much to ask.

“That is who we are,” Sanborn said of Democratic values aimed at improving the lives of the poor and downtrodden. “I can’t believe we are going to go there.”

While Democrats and Republicans seem to agree that the root of the problem rests with the federal government and Congress for not providing support for those seeking asylum in Maine, the parties seem to strongly disagree about what the state’s responsibilities are to support those individuals and families.

House Speaker Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, said Democrats agree with Republicans that truly “illegal” immigrants, those who have covertly gained entry to the U.S. with no permission from the government, should not be eligible for state-funded welfare programs.

“People who don’t have papers, who are undocumented, who are here illegally should not get benefits,” Eves said. “We have been trying to push that for months now and the Republicans have rejected it. You’ll have to go talk to them to wrap your head around it.”

Eves also said Democrats see income-tax cuts for the wealthy as their biggest sticking point in the negotiations.

“Who gets the greatest benefit from a tax cut is key for our caucus,” Eves said. “We’ve been fighting for the middle class to get a larger benefit because we reject trickle-down economics.”

Eves said the budget supported by Democrats includes an additional $14 million in state funding on top of the $200 million nursing homes already get.

The Democratic plan also includes funding for the state’s Drugs for the Elderly program, which helps low-income seniors cover the cost of prescription medicines, a program Republicans wanted to eliminate, Eves said.

Rep. Ken Fredette, R-Newport, House minority leader and the top negotiator for House Republicans on the budget this week, was reluctant to offer any details on the Republican position on welfare for immigrants.

Fredette, during and after a news conference Wednesday, refused to elaborate on details when pressed.

“I don’t think it’s helpful for us to negotiate this in the press,” Fredette said. “I think those conversations I consider to be private and ongoing and I consider that they will continue to be ongoing. It’s not helpful to have different opinions out there about where we are and where we are not.”

Overall, the total portion of the state budget spent on immigrant welfare programs is only a sliver of the $6.6 billion proposed spending package now in the hands of party leaders.

But for Republicans such as Timberlake, and many others in his House caucus, the issue is a matter of principle and a matter of priorities, he said.

“Do they qualify for any federal benefits?” Timberlake asked. “The answer is ‘no – zero;’ they qualify for zero federal benefits.”

He said the analogy he uses to explain the situation is a simple one. It’s like children waiting to get on a bus to go to school, Timberlake said.

“There are Maine people who want to get on the bus, who want to go to school,” Timberlake said. “And we are not letting them get on the bus. Instead, we are putting asylum-seekers and so forth ahead of those wanting to get on the bus who are Mainers — our elderly, our disabled. That’s where we come from.”

sthistle@sunjournal.com