80th Legislature: Why Do We Even Have To Take Money From Other Social Services To Pay For CHIP?
Vince Leibowitz | Mar 15, 2007 | Comments 1
This is utterly astounding to me:
A proposal to cover more youngsters under the Children’s Health Insurance Program could come at a cost to other services for needy Texans.
House budget writers, in order to find nearly $78 million more in state funds for the proposed CHIP expansion, whittled proposed increases in other social services, including mental health care and breast and cervical cancer screening.
Their recommendations wouldn’t mean a cut in current spending but would scale back expansions of the services — bad enough to those who say the state already falls far short of helping its needy.
“You don’t take from one vulnerable population in order to meet the needs of another vulnerable population,” said Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, who is pushing the CHIP expansion but this week voted against taking the money from other social services to pay for it.
The CHIP expansion in House Bill 109 would eliminate a 90-day waiting period for uninsured youngsters; make it easier to qualify for the program, which is for children in families that aren’t poor enough for Medicaid but can’t afford private insurance; and allow children to remain eligible for a year rather than requalify every six months.
Why in the Hell should Turner or any other legislator be put in the position of having to vote to take money from one social service to pay for another?
What happened to that alleged $14 billion dollar surplus? Oh, that’s right! Texas Governor Rick Perry and the Republicans squandered about half of that on their over-the-top property tax relief scheme.
But, what about the rest of the surplus? Where’s that going? Why do we have to turn CHIP into a social services Robin Hood issue? That’s utterly unacceptable.
If Republicans hadn’t squandered the surplus (which, by the way, was only so large because of the cuts to CHIP and other social services back in 2003) on property tax “relief,” the Lege wouldn’t be faced with these decisions now.
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Filed Under: 80th Legislature
Preach it, Brother! We should never forget that this is a totally artificial budget crunch, caused entirely by school property tax cuts that are bigger than we can afford. And we should never forget that the Senate Ds failed to challenge the Williams Amendment to HB 1 in the 2006 Special Session, which dropped the tax rate from an amount that could be paid for with the new margins tax to one that sucked the life out of health and human services. We need to rebuild the Senate Democratic Caucus from the ground up.