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Good news: Senate passes FMAP funding, saves Pa. budget
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Good news: Senate passes FMAP funding, saves Pa. budget
You remember back on June 30, when Gov. Ed Rendell and the state legislature congratulated themselves on their ability to put together a budget, you know, on time? The celebration was a bit premature: There were a few missing, minor details — including a yet-to-be-determined natural gas drilling severance tax and $850 million in promised federal Medicaid money, without which, Rendell had said, he would have had to slash all kinds of state funds: there would be service cuts, 22,000 state layoffs, dramatic cuts to domestic violence programs, homelessness programs, child welfare programs, and on and on. The bloodletting would have been severe, no doubt about it.
Here's the good news: This morning, the US Senate took a break from, well, not doing much of anything, thanks to perpetual Republican obstinacy, to pass an emergency funding bill allocating billions to fund much-needed Medicaid reimbursements to states*. So, for the most part, it seems, the Commonwealth is solvent. That's a plus.
Here's what's fucked up about this thing, however: The vote this morning was not actually on the funding — which was, I should note, completely and 100 percent offset by spending cuts, including future cuts to the country's food stamps program, because God knows poor people have it too easy these days, and added absolutely nothing to the deficit — it was to end the Republican filibuster. Yes, the Republicans tried to filibuster — as in, not even allowing to come up for a vote — a completely paid-for spending bill that had $16 billion in Medicaid funding (less than the $24 billion the Dems wanted) and $10 billion to prevent massive teacher layoffs.
This is, perhaps, the very least the government could do to aid the national economy. The fucking least. It basically keeps states afloat, at a time when tax revenues are down and welfare expenditures are necessarily up. See, the national government, for better or worse, has the ability to deficit-spend. State governments, by and large, do not. They need federal resources to counteract the shit-storm left over from the Great Recession.
And yet, this morning, 38 Senate Republicans — all but two of them, the Maine sisters — decided that this totally deficit-neutral bill shouldn't even be allowed to come up for a vote, because … well, just fucking because. (They hate teachers and poor people? Who the fuck knows.) Never mind that these same born-again deficit peacocks fell all over themselves to vote for Bush's unfunded wars, Bush's unfunded Medicare expansion, Bush's unfunded fucking tax cuts for billionaires, etc., and even to this day want demand that we extend the deficit-exploding tax cuts — even though supply-side economic theories have been proven wrong again and again and again — and will be more than happy to vote the Department of Defense whatever largesse its contractors demand.
This is what I mean when I say that Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, Jim DeMint, and the rest of their loathsome ilk are simply not fit to govern. That America is even considering — even toying with the idea of thinking about — returning these clowns to power speaks volumes about the unsophistication and gullibility of the American electorate.
*Correction: I'd earlier said this bill extended $87 billion to states. Rather, that was what Congress had allocated before. Instead, the total price tag is about $26 billion, and $16 billion or so of that is headed to Medicaid, the rest to teachers. As The Hill explains:
Congress approved $87 billion in emergency Medicaid funding to help states weather the economic downturn that's squeezed local budgets nationwide. The provision increased Medicaid's Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) — which represents Washington's share of the state-federal program — by at least 6.2 percent for all states.
That extra funding expires at the end of 2010 — halfway through the budget year of most states, prompting Democrats to push for an extension.
Their original plan to keep the 6.2 percent increase through June 2011 went nowhere in the face of Senate budget hawks. Instead, Democratic leaders adopted a plan, long-supported by Collins, to scale out the extra funding over the six months.
The measure that passed Wednesday provides a 3.2 percent FMAP bump for the first quarter of next year, and a 1.2 percent hike in the second quarter.
Update: Nancy Pelosi has apparently ordered Congress back in session to pass the bill. Good on her.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Philly City Paper and Diane Menke, Philly News Now. Philly News Now said: Good news: Senate passes FMAP funding, saves Pa. budget: You remember back on June 30, when Gov. Ed Rendell and ... http://bit.ly/8ZGAUF [...]
ABSOLUTE TRUTH: "... returning these clowns to power speaks volumes about the unsophistication and gullibility of the American electorate."
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