From the Sacramento Bee:

A budget shortfall in California has prompted cuts to disability payments starting in July – triggering criticism that seniors and people with disabilities are paying disproportionately for the state’s fiscal mismanagement.

An estimated 1.2 million people receiving state disability payments will see their benefits cut by 2.3 percent this year. Lawmakers had approved a budget deal with $268.7 million in conditional cuts for seniors and people with disabilities, hoping that the federal stimulus would make up the difference. They anticipated receiving $10 billion in federal budgetary aid, but the state received just $8.17 billion.

“To balance the budget, it falls on me?” said James Nuñez, 49, who has cerebral palsy and learning difficulties. “That’s going to hurt. Twenty dollars means a lot to me.”

… Marty Omoto, director of the California Disability Community Action Network, said the benefit cuts follow a freezing of cost-of-living increases in last year’s budget and more than a dozen temporary suspensions of increases since 1991.

“You can say that there are hard choices to make,” Omoto said. “But go back a decade or so and it seems that it’s the same people – the seniors and people with disabilities – who are being targeted over and over.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 7:09 am and is filed under benefits, budget, intellectual/developmental disabilities, NOT2BEMISSED. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.