I’ve hammered Budget Chairman Allen Icet and his cohort Rick Stream for wanting to turn down more than a hundred million abso-freakin’-lutely free dollars to put most of the people living at less than half the poverty level back on Medicaid. The proposal to accept the free funds did eventually get into HB 11, but so what?–because now the House has turned down the deal. What I said about the niggardliness of Republicans on the Budget Committee applies to Republicans in the House at large:
All those hundreds of millions of pennies would cost our cash strapped state not a single penny. For them to thumb their collective nose at such free funds is not penny wise and pound foolish but just plain foolish.
The Missouri Hospital Association is willing–nay, wanting–to give the state more than fourteen million dollars ($14,150,000 to be precise) to be used for health care for Missourians making less than half the poverty wage. That investment would bring in another $91.7 million in federal dollars–almost $104 million altogether. But the Republicans oppose giveaways to those church mice. The effrontery of anyone to remain in such penury! Why don’t they go out and earn a Ph.D. in chemistry and make a decent living working for Monsanto?
Of course, the Senate might talk House Republicans into accepting its proposal, whereby the churchmice could get back on Medicaid, but only if they can come up with a thousand smackeroos a year. Be real. These are people living on less than half of poverty level. They don’t have and can’t find a thousand bucks, so the Senate plan is about an eyelash better than just turning the funds down flat, as the representatives did.
These people are Scrooge reincarnated. We have Representative Ebenezer Icet. Representative Ebenezer Stream. Senator Ebenezer Schmitt. And a host of other Ebenezers.
I was in the House side gallery watching the debate on HB 11 this morning.
One republican representative stated in debate: “When we increase our welfare, we increase the cost of medical care.” I freakin’ kid you not.
Ah, comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. It makes complete sense from a right wingnut republican point of view. If poor people don’t have health insurance it’ll be cheaper for the rest of us! Except it isn’t.
There quite a bit of concern that the republicans will play “Calvinball” with HB(?)306 when it comes up. The republicans kept citing 306 as a “solution” to the minority’s expressed problems with HB 11.
Hah! You’re hitting your mark hotflash, great reporting.
In my recent two visits to Jeff City, once lobbying with MNEA and with the West County Dems on Tuesday, it’s clear that the House Republicans don’t seem to take government’s responsibilities too seriously. They block and obstruct. Wrench in the machine. I’ve heard not a few times the notion that Missourian Republicans have a strong ‘no-government’ agenda, as contrasted with more mainstream limited government.
The right-wing ideology gets almost too much to take, however, when economic stimulus in the form of infrastructure investment is proposed to be diverted into a tax-cut scheme.
As KC Star Prime Buzz reports,
You mean like pork projects like roads and bridges; schools?
Investing in things that people actually use and benefit from may not be kosher to orthodox right-wing ideology, but even a radical Republican when faced with the luxurious need to, say, cross a river, are sure to become gentiles in regard to ‘pork projects’ in a heartbeat.
The last eight years showed this laissez-faire Capitalism run-amok, with tax cuts for the rich as dysfunctional and ultimately self-defeating, the people know this, have voted accordingly — and yet the affliction of fallacious thinking on these things seem to persevere and continue to rule the roost in the State Capital.
The whole country is moving forward with goodness welling up in the land, but sadly the Show Me state is being held back by an obsolete political ball and chain on the side of the aisle that controls the agenda in Jeff City.
Ebenezer gone wild.