State actions show a ‘deficit of decency’

Columnist Adrian Walker writes in the Boston Globe that Massachusetts budget cuts promise “a bloodbath for the disabled,” even though disability advocates played a key role in the lobbying effort that is bringing the state an extra $90 million in federal Medicaid funding.

Walker says only a fraction of that money is headed for healthcare, and almost none will go to the agencies that helped fight for it. Instead, Walker says, the money will go into the state’s general fund “to be spent on whatever.”

The impact on the developmentally disabled will be direct and immediate. Roughly 4,500 families will lose state aid that helps them care for the disabled at home. Employment and job training programs have been cut.

All this for a community that was underserved even before the cuts.

… It’s easy – far too easy – to paint lawmakers as villains when they are dealing with the worst fiscal crisis in well over a decade. But legislators routinely drone on about their commitment to the most vulnerable among us in public, while failing to follow through in private. This is just a particularly blatant example.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 9:34 am and is filed under budget, commentary, intellectual/developmental disabilities, Medicaid/Medicare, NOT2BEMISSED, politics. 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.