We’re starting to pull apart the pieces of Scott Walker’s 1500-page biennial state budget, in its horrifying callousness and fiscal illogic. Republican Senators added a dash of just plain malicious retribution to the situation.
Remember death panels, Sarah Palin’s imaginary bureaucratic scare tactic, that so riled the Republican base? That farce is about to become reality in Wisconsin.
Among the outrageous proposals in Governor Walker’s budget plan is $110 million
cuts to the Family Care, a program which provides long-term care for people who are elderly or disabled. That budget cut will reduce payments for 2,000 patients with end-stage kidney disease. Scott Walker is making Palin’s propaganda a reality. One can only sadly muse at the lengths that presumed presidential contenders will go to show they are tough enough for the job.
Women’s reproductive health is also poised to take a hit as Walker seeks to eliminate a recently passed law requiring coverage for prescription birth control. Walker
maintains that it is an “unacceptable government mandate on employers with moral objections to these services,” and that it “increases the cost of health insurance for all payers.” Nevermind that the “National Business Group on Health, an organization representing more than 160 large national and multi-national employers,
estimates that failing to provide contraception coverage actually costs employers 15 to 17 percent more than providing it.”
As several Democratic legislators
literally moved their desks outside to speak with their constituents who were denied entry into the Capitol building (despite a judge’s injunction against Walker's Capitol closure) Republican Senators, seeking to coax the Fab 14 back into the state, displayed their abysmal motivational techniques.
Previously, they had withheld paychecks from direct deposit demanding that the checks be picked up in person and denied Democratic staff copier access. As further inducements to return, Republican senators voted to impose $100 per day fines for their fellow legislators AWOL for 2 or more session days, depleted their expense accounts, and revoked the legislators' and staffs' parking privileges.
Whether balancing the budget on the backs of the terminally ill, impeding responsible reproductive health, or dictating terms to fellow elected officials, Republicans are showing they are both heartless and clueless.
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