But it's worth drilling down on the third biggest item on the list -- weighing in at $16.1 billion -- the "Repealing Medicaid FMAP increase," because I can't think of anything that better demonstrates the priorities of the current Republican Party.
Medicaid is the government's primary social insurance program targeted at poor and disabled Americans. Medicaid is responsible, for example, for such things as nursing home care for the indigent. It is jointly funded by the states and the federal government --it is, in fact, one of the biggest items in most state budgets.
When the recession hit, two things happened almost immediately at the state level: tax revenue plummeted, and applications for Medicaid coverage boomed. The two phenomena were intimately related, of course. People who lost their jobs and homes as a result of a cratering economy also lost their healthcare.
Yeah. Damn them Pubbies. I just read an article the other day about a Republican-supporting doctor in Philadelphia who stabbed seven old people in the spine with a pair of scissors, killing them all, so he wouldn't have to spend any money or effort to keep them alive.
Right?
Right?
Uh. Wait.
Let me check that again.
"Nyever mind." - E. Litella
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Keep it clean for gene.