Bill to End Prenatal Care for Illegal Immigrants Left Unresolved : Funding: Assembly adjourns without taking new vote, leaving Wilson with a piece of unfinished budget business.

The Assembly adjourned for a summer recess Thursday without reconsidering its earlier rejection of a measure to end the provision of prenatal care to pregnant illegal immigrants.

The legislation, which Gov. Pete Wilson and Republican lawmakers say was part of a bipartisan agreement on the state budget, fell five votes short of passage Tuesday night and was to be reconsidered Thursday. It is the only piece of the budget package not yet on Wilson’s desk.

Wilson aides say the governor is expected to sign the budget today. To pay for the prenatal program without adding to the state’s deficit, Wilson will have to use his line-item veto to delete about $50 million for services that would have gone to legal California residents.

Assembly Republican Leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga intended to ask the Assembly to reconsider its vote Thursday but said he concluded that doing so would be fruitless.

“We didn’t have the votes,” he said.

Brulte said Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown assured Wilson and other legislative leaders during budget negotiations that Assembly Democrats would provide sufficient votes to pass the bill if all 33 Republicans in the lower house voted in favor of it.

But Brown has said he warned Wilson that the Assembly probably would not pass the bill.

The budget, which a majority of Democrats voted to approve, contains only enough money to keep the prenatal program running through Sept. 1.

But a separate state law establishes the service as an entitlement program, meaning that any woman who applies for the program and qualifies must be given the care--whether there is money in the budget for it or not. The bill the Assembly rejected would have repealed that law.

Wilson argues that the prenatal care is one of many magnets drawing immigrants into California illegally. The state, says Wilson, should not be providing this service to illegal immigrants when it does not have enough money to give the same care to all legal residents who need it.

Democrats, however, contend that Wilson’s policy is shortsighted. They point out that the children of illegal immigrants are U.S. citizens. If they are born ill and their parents are poor, their care is paid for by California taxpayers.

Brulte said he may try again to pass the bill when the Assembly reconvenes in August after a four-week recess.