Sunday, March 15, 2015

The GOP plan to cut life-saving aid in WI is working

Fresh details, here:
Elderly, disabled among those hit hardest by cut in food stamp benefits
Background with history of earlier program cuts, tax increases on the poor, and media shortcomings that do not square with the entire context, here:
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Scott Walker learned early lessons at father's Iowa church
That [does not square] its theme - - 
His religious upbringing set a course for the governor's later life...
- - with this account of Walker's new food stamp, health insurance and unemployment program cuts...
...require welfare recipients to undergo drug testing, as well as reduce the length of time they can receive benefits from five to four years...Drug testing would be required for all food stamp and public health care applicants. Those applying for unemployment benefits would go through a selective testing process. 
And with this story documenting three Walker tax increases in his first, 'no-tax-increase-budget' that raised $49.4 million from poor and low-income Wisconsinites to off-set other tax cuts.

And squares also with this report about a separate, flat $20 cut Walker aimed, as I disclosed nearly four years ago, at low-income W-2 workers in their monthly checks to achieve, as the faceless budget-bureaucrats put it:

"To further encourage W-2 recipients to recognize that the goal of W-2 is for participants to secure unsubsidized employment, reduce the monthly benefit check by $20."  
And this story, too:
Walker wants to push some recipients out of SeniorCare program
And this editorial documenting that thousands of low-income Wisconsinites lost their health insurance coverage because Walker decided to refuse federal Medicaid funding:

State must find 38,000 who lost insurance: Our View


Not to mention that had Walker taken the federal funding, Wisconsin taxpayers would have saved millions of dollars:
Medicaid expansion would have saved state $206 million, fiscal bureau says
More background, here. 

4 comments:

my5cents said...

The problem with Walker refusing Federal dollars is that either he thinks he is helping to cut the deficit, or he is so paranoid that those dollars will stop on a moments notice that he cannot bring himself to accept them. He gives no thought to how not getting those Federal dollars will affect the people it is intended to help. And he gives no thought to how it will save the taxpayers in the long run. He is void of compassion and empathy. You never see him hanging out in old folks homes asking them about their quality of life do you? You never see him out among anyone who needs a hand up either. So much of what he says is nothing but bullet points. Where's the detail. Can he even have a detailed line of thought. I do wonder. It's always, "we are going to do this and this is what will happen," period, nothing more. Uppity Wisconsin had a story today about Walker's use of the royal "We" in everything he says. Does he really think he is that far above everyone else, or is it simply his way of not taking credit or fault for anything because "we" made the decisions, and not I? How sad.

Raven said...

@ my5cents :

It's the usual Scott Walker budgetary cycle — (1) Cut benefits/programs for the elderly & poor; (2) Declare surplus; accordingly, (3) Cut taxes for the rich & major corporations; (4) Declare deficit; accordingly, go back to (1).

Walker clearly feels safe doing that to pocket state dollars (he owns state government, including the state Supreme Court), but may fear federal prosecution if he did it with federal dollars.   Hence refusing an infusion of federal dollars into the mix.

TBIGUY said...

Based on the job performance of Congress one would assume that all members be tested as based on productivity metrics, it's obvious many members are either smoking crack cocaine, or on LSD, thinking that it's the poor and disabled that need to be pinched, instead of the recipients of. " Corporate Welfare", that amounts to 1000 times the expenditures for all programs assisting low income, disabled persons. The fact that Walker is #2 in the GOP polls sure tells me one thing, and that is, they're still smoking the. " Reagan Era Fairy Dust/Trickle Down Economics". The only thing that trickles down, is when folks who love in reality, wet themselves, while laughing but mostly crying, when they hear and see legislation, whose long term effects will destroy this great nation. All justified by profits at any and all costs.

Anonymous said...

Why should Scott Walker worry about some Wisconsin people dying because of his policies? He's running for president, for Pete's sake.

The Republican austerity-for-the-masses and millions in subsidies for multinational corporations and billionaires kills.

And it's not by accident. It's by design.