Set aside for a moment the personal and community impacts of rejecting almost $679 million in available federal Obamacare/Medicaid funding so that Scott Walker can continue to oppose President Obama's signature program, and ask yourself how Walker can claim to be a fiscal conservative when rejection of the funding- - with the GOP-led Legislature's approval - - means state taxpayers are making up the shortfall, as explained in this Journal Sentinel story:
Long answer: The health care impacts of these fiscal and policy decisions on actual Wisconsin humans - - and the same can be said for Walker and his allies' blocking cleaner air, humane food stamp access, unfettered voting rights, useful transit, women's medical and reproductive services, and fully-funded public education, to name but a few - - are secondary-to-absent in the GOP mindset and playbook to the primary goals of achieving polling or partisan power advantages
Shorter answer: These 100% politically-motivated fiscal phonies are one-dimensional power brokers who don't consider the flesh-and-blood outcomes of their handiwork - - nor do they care enough to go in a different direction when informed even if they end up raising your taxes.
...Gov. Scott Walker and the Legislature's opposition to the law is projected to cost $678.6 million in state tax dollars through the 2017 fiscal year...
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated in December that Wisconsin is on track to spend $678.6 million more through the fiscal year ending June 30, 2017, than the state would have had Walker accepted the federal money available through the law.That's $678.6 million that did not have to be extracted from Wisconsin taxpayers, and which could have been used to fund all the programs cut to enforce an ideological austerity on services which could add to quality of life across-the-board here.
Long answer: The health care impacts of these fiscal and policy decisions on actual Wisconsin humans - - and the same can be said for Walker and his allies' blocking cleaner air, humane food stamp access, unfettered voting rights, useful transit, women's medical and reproductive services, and fully-funded public education, to name but a few - - are secondary-to-absent in the GOP mindset and playbook to the primary goals of achieving polling or partisan power advantages
Shorter answer: These 100% politically-motivated fiscal phonies are one-dimensional power brokers who don't consider the flesh-and-blood outcomes of their handiwork - - nor do they care enough to go in a different direction when informed even if they end up raising your taxes.
Walker and the legislature's actions defy logic and reason. He is the only governor to use the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid, force people on to the ACA exchanges and then turn down the federal money to pay for what he did! Governors of the other states have accepted the federal dollars associated with the Affordable Care Act. Walker will have turned down close to $1 billion before he leaves office. This alone would have paid for lots of road funding instead of borrowing and pushing the principal and interest on to future generations. But you are correct...............they simply don't care for the cost to people as long as they can score conservative political points.
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