Whatever happened to the Guns or Butter premise

by Run

Whatever happened to the Guns or Butter premise?

Naomi Freundlich at Maggie Mahar’s Health Beat Blog discusses the passage of the $26 billion state aid package and why it does not go far enough in securing healthcare for those who qualify for Medicaid. Passage of $26 billion State Aid Package Is Merely a Stop-Gap Measure For Medicaid Woes.

To get this past the Senate, the bill was stripped of $12 billion Food Stamp Program and closed loopholes in incentives which encourage employers to move jobs overseas to make it revenue neutral. While it is good to see Congress start to close loop holes for companies and individuals who utilize them to their own benefit and not for what they were intended, you have to wonder what were they thinking when it came to the food stamp program. In the midst of a mediocre job creation economy with no end in the near term, the millionaire Senate balances the budget on the backs of the poor who depend upon Food Stamps . . . 41 million citizens in 2010 . . . to get Senator’s Snowe and Collin’s votes. The kicker here is the Senate playing Education off against healthcare and food stamps. Education, healthcare, or food ???



Even with the adjustments, the always neatly groomed, with the Edwards haircut, and nattily dressed John Boehner calls it a pay off to Union bosses and liberal special interests. Ohio did register its uninsured numbers at 13.9% of the population which many would probably qualify for Medicaid if unemployed long enough. Then there is Joe Barton of Texas complaining about the extension also. Yep that is Texas, the number 1 amongst all of the states with the highest number of uninsured at 26.9%. Hey at > than 1 in 4 residents without healthcare what could John really say other than:

“There is no emergency!”

Maybe there is no emergency for Rep. John Barton who is covered by the congressional healthcare plan and maybe we can blame the number of uninsured in Texas on illegal and legal Hispanic immigrants? Wonder what was he thinking?

“80 percent of those the Gallup organization or the Census Bureau would count as uninsured are actually U.S. citizens. “If we took all the immigrants out of Texas—legal and illegal—we would still have the highest uninsured rate in the country,”

says Eva DeLuna, a budget analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities (CPPP), an Austin-based think tank. Texans are Mostly Likely