10pm update: More reading on the event held regarding health care spending.
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Extra content: Here’s some extra reading material regarding GOP v. Health Care.
But in regards to the title of the editorial. When one considers what the General Assembly Republicans do when the GA is in session, a week’s vacation from them isn’t the problem here. It’s keeping those blockheads in power that’s really hurting the state.
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If you had the opportunity to invest $1 and get $5 in return, you’d take it, right? But then again, you’re likely not a Republican in the General Assembly.
But the week before Spring Break wasn’t just a week where General Assembly Republicans stayed the course in opposing the reversal of the 2005 cuts. They also cut funds for alcohol and drug-addiction treatment, meals for seniors, county health centers and public health inspectors. (Apparently some of those cuts were reversed, I haven’t read direct details, since the state government is apparently below the standards of some media in Missouri).
We’d like to think the General Assembly Republicans are more clueless than cheap. But that might be a bit of a generous assumption.
“But House Republicans have questioned the wisdom of expanding welfare programs during a recession.”
Recessions are the sort of time when you want a safety-net around to help the people out who are suddenly having problems (or who have gone from bad to worse). I’m sure that if one asked the right questions, you could get G.A. Republicans who’d oppose expanding welfare at any time, or even having it at all. The Republicans who think that providing some more health care will cause all sorts of doom and lead to the Republican monetary base hiding out in gulches have too much power for our own good.
And yes “welfare”. I went there and used quotations. Because providing easier access to health care for children and poorer people should be called what it is, providing easier access to health care for children and poorer people. Just lay it out and make it obvious. Health care availability, do you want more or less? Because we know who you could re-elect if you want less, and who you can elect if you want more. Restoring good sense in the Capitol starts when you change who has the majority and put people in who don’t just have a clue, but who also care for the people.
Jay Nixon winning the Governor’s office by 18 points wasn’t enough to wake up General Assembly Republicans. Because the numbers that matter are not 57/39, but 82 and 18. Imagine what would be going on today if Barack Obama was President and John Boehner and Mitch McConnell ran Congress, and you’d be pretty close to what’s going on in Missouri right now. General Assembly Republicans haven’t been hit hard enough in elections for their reckless policies, and they think they can keep on their course without consequences.
Many more paragraphs can be written about the lack of logic, sense, compassion, and intelligence involved in turning away stimulus money in times like these. Do we want to be one of the first to recover or one of the last to recover? Do we want to be on the cutting edge or left in the dust?
The only people who “win” as a result of our General Assembly Republicans, are the people in the other states where better services are provided and better safety-nets exist.
When you put intelligence above ideology, you can get good things. When you do the opposite, then you’re a General Assembly Republican.
it doesn’t even have to be the cutting edge … anything is lots better than sitting in stale backwater.
And it isn’t just the question of alleviating unnecessary suffering … by adhering to a rigid ideological stance regarding what is appropriate government spending these bubbas are actually hindering economic recovery and thwarting the stimulus effect of increased welfare spending.
More from the editorial I linked to
$59M is more than $23M. 5:1 returns is pretty good.
Not to mention the money saved by having health care.
And etc. And etc.
It’s not like selling chili from a truck in the summer. This isn’t that hard a sell at all*.
(* – well, to people who aren’t Republican elected officials)
a repeat of an interview with Jared Diamond, the author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, that seems to me to speak to situations like this. During the interview, Diamond said something to the effect that societies succeed or fail depending on whether or not the consequences of failure will affect the decision-making elite. Explains a lot when you think about it.
I havn’t read Diamond’s book, but I think that I will maybe do so.
When people are unemployed (and uninsured) during an economic downturn, and the federal government is helping you pay for their medical care… you TAKE it! Why do the Repub’s make the assumption that in two years, when the federal support MIGHT go away, those same hundreds of thousands of their citizens will STILL be unemployed and without health care? Why do they make the claim that the stats will be the same (or worse) in two years than they are today?
Oh yeah… it’s because we didn’t cut their taxes. I forgot. They also don’t understand that people who are unemployed don’t pay much in taxes.
know that the Republican legislature is turning down a hundred million absolutely freakin’ free dollars for health care? One in ten, you think? I doubt it. And after it’s done, how many Missourians will realize that the people of this state just got screwed a hundred million times? One in ten? I doubt it.
Whose fault is that? Should the five o’clock news be wailing about Republican intransigence? Should the Post-Dispatch be plastering this story across the top of the front page? Should everybody with a computer be reading this site or some other that talks about these issues instead of learning about Jessica Simpson in People magazine?
The way this story floats around in the ether instead of hitting people between the eyes makes me grind my teeth.
I have a great idea to save the state of Missouri money. Representative Cynthia Davis has really hit on something with having christian Doctors and Nurses providing free medical care instead of using Medicaid. We wouldn’t even have to cut only services for the mental illness, developmental disabilities, addictions, affordable child care, meals on wheels, health insurance for low wage workers, or any of the least in our society. We can expand on that theme and have an all “religious” volunteer state legilature. Instead of paying Representatives, Senators, or even the Govenor we should ask for volunteers from faith based groups. We can even take that further and ask for a all volunteer police force, state troopers, and even for highway repair. We can shut down the state capitol; legislators can meet in elementary schools throughout the state after hours, and even shut down the govenors mansion. We could save a ton on electric alone. Just imagine the amount of money we could save, and we could return all of that stimulus money back to the federal government, after all we are going to need it to pay for the illegal, immoral wars that the last patriotic president started. The only problem is we will have to decide what religion we are going to run the state under. Perhaps since the Catholics, and Lutherans already have a structure in place we could draw straws between the two. After all what did Jefferson, or the founding fathers know when they demanded separation of church and state.