Jan 29 2009
Federal Stimulus Package Is A Back Door For Democratic Goals
In California, everyone from teachers to construction workers are holding their breath - hoping that the federal stimulus package will have money for them.
The stimulus bill, that the President hopes to sign on Friday, is not just a package of spending increases and tax cuts. It is also a way for the Democrats to rewrite laws and engage in restructuring issues to advance their goals and programs.
Included in the stimulus package is a provision for anyone recieving unemployment to be put onto Medicaid - regardless of their other assets. In fact, the language states that there can be no need based qualification. The federal government is commiting to cover 100% of the costs for this through December 2010. What about after that? States are going to get used to this influx of money. They are going to be mad when the influx of money ends, and there are still the requirements to put these people on Medicad (and their families too).
There is also money included to help laid-off workers retain the same health plans they had from their former employers.
This is one step closer to Universal health care. The federal government is spending money they don’t hav eto advance priorities of the Democrats.
Under this bill, the federal government would pay 65% of the premiums for laid-off workers health insurance premiums for a year. There are NO income or means test with this. The Republicans want to limit this coverage to people who had annual incomes of less than $100,000 or assets worth less than $1 million. They also want to prevent people with more than $1 million of family income from taking advantage of the Medicaid option for unemployed workers (which also can have no means test under the current language of the bill). Allowing unrestricted access to these programs for people with money will lead to abuse of the programs, a higher cost than estimated, and is fiscally irresponsible.
A priority of the Republicans needs to be stopping this. There is a total of $825 billion in the bill, $127 billion to cover health insurance and some to cover education. The federal government doesn’t have this money. They are going to have to raise the debt limit and spend the country more into debt.
If there was a plan to get the country out of debt and stimulate the economy - I would tell Republicans to support it. When the plan is simply to spend more money and get into more debt, the plan is fiscally irresponsible and needs to be quashed.
As a side note - the stimulus bill seems to have a lot of money for California, which would make a budget solution easier because there might be less of a hole if the federal government fills some of it. However, the influx of federal money is temporary and does not relive the Legislature of their duty to fix the chronic spending imbalance in the state budget.
