Fire Walk With Me

taesangtae:

WOW! How did he accomplish such a feat?

• Romney’s initial emergency budget proposal for fiscal year 2003 called for $343 million in immediate funding cuts, necessitating layoffs of state employees and cuts in aid to cities and towns for public safety and education.

• He also proposed cuts in state expenditures for Medicaid, the government program providing health care for the poorest state residents. The cuts included caps in payments to medical providers (one example being through limiting payments for hospital stays to 20 days, no matter how sick the patient), increased stringency of the criteria for Medicaid eligibility, and rationing of access to higher-priced medications for Medicaid patients. Some 36,000 Massachusetts residents lost their Medicaid eligibility.

• The 2003 emergency budget revision proposal also included funding cuts affecting public colleges and universities, treatment for schizophrenic and other mentally ill patients, and various other social services.

• Romney’s austerity budget for fiscal year 2004, unveiled just weeks later, included even more substantial cuts in state funding for cities and towns. The final budget passed by the legislature (after overriding Romney’s attempt to make still further cuts using line-item vetoes), cut funding for local aid to many communities by as much as 20 percent. Already struggling to absorb funding cuts from the prior year’s budget, communities across the state were forced to cut services and hike fees, while laying off teachers, police officers, and other municipal workers.

• To compensate for lost revenue from the state government, communities raised local property tax rates, helping drive up the average residential property tax bill by 22 percent over the course of Romney’s tenure. In response to complaints about the high residential property taxes, Romney supported and signed into law legislation that allowed communities to shift some of the burden of rising property taxes from residential property owners onto business owners.

• As with the 2003 emergency revision budget, Medicaid funding, which was responsible for more than one-fourth of all state spending and which had been growing rapidly, was targeted for cuts in the 2004 budget. In addition to proposing reductions in payments to hospitals and nursing homes for care of Medicaid patients, and restrictions on Medicaid patients’ access to prescription drugs and eligibility for nursing homes admission, Romney proposed that the low-income Medicaid patients be charged monthly fees for participation in the program, along with co-payments for visits to doctors’ offices.

• Romney vetoed a funding bill for payment of attorneys representing the poor, declaring that it was more important for the state to balance its books than to pay attorneys, and that the attorneys should provide the services pro bono. The cuts in payments for representation of the indigent provoked outraged attorneys to strike. The plan to remake the court system was unsuccessful.

• Romney proposed 33 new fees along with increases in 57 existing fees, resulting in higher costs for birth certificates, new car purchases, driver’s learning permits, firearms permits, professional licenses, and billboards advertising, as well as for many state services.

• Opponents said many of the fees posed a hardship on those who could least afford them, such as fees for the state to provide certification of blindness and a photo identification card for the blind. The proposal also called for a $50 fee for tuberculosis tests and a $400 fee for those who tested positive (the tuberculosis fees were rejected by the legislature).

I urge you to pay attention to all this. As a resident of Massachusetts I have long been critical of his callous attitude towards the people who need help the most. It would be a tragedy if the entire country were to fall into his hands.