What Slashed Budgets Look Like Up Close

As the Democrats and Republicans continued their pretend duel yesterday, I read several articles which stated that the difference between the amount each party was willing to cut was a "meager" $6 billion. One or two pundits pointed out that the $39 billion in cuts they finally agreed to only represents less than one-half percent of the overall budget.

While I realize that, in those terms, $39 billion sounds like chump change, that $39 billion will be felt by the most vulnerable members of our society which doesn't include most of those very pundits. So, it is easy for them to pass off $39 billion as no big deal, but I can tell you that the current cuts and the previous ones are truly a big deal to hundreds of thousands of people.

Geov Parrish at Eat the State! highlights how the tanking economy and shrinking federal aid to states impacts state budgets, in general, and the State of Washington, in specific.

In February, as part of her effort to slash money in the current year, Gov. Gregoire ordered $7.9 million in cuts to Disability Lifeline’s cash stipend program. And, so, last week, with only a few days notice, the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) announced that it would be cutting the cash grants by 26 percent. This comes on top of a cut of 21 percent announced in January, meaning that Disability Lifeline clients have seen their income from the grants reduced by nearly half already this year.

What is Disability Lifeline? It’s exactly what the name suggests: a lifeline for people too physically or mentally disabled to work, and who are not eligible for Social Security Disability (notoriously difficult to qualify for) or other federal programs. In other words, those cash grants are often the only cash available to survive on for people who literally have – usually through no fault of their own – no other resources and no means to get them. And even before the 2011-13 budget, the state has reduced the paltry amount they must survive on by nearly half – including a cut last week on less than a week’s notice.

At last word, state Senate and House negotiators are leaning toward elimination the Disability Lifeline cash grant program entirely for the 2011-13 budget, though in a fit of generosity apparently the clients’ eligibility for food stamp assistance might be retained. A good thing, too; what with all the people that cut will cause to become newly homeless, we can’t have all those bloated bellies and protruding ribs discomforting us at the freeway ramps.

Similarly, House and Senate negotiators cut a deal last week that would eliminate the eligibility for 12,000 people now on the state’s Basic Health Plan for low income residents – about 20 percent of its rolls – by redefining eligibility to 133 percent, rather than 200 percent, of the federal poverty level. That’s about $18,000 a year for a family of three. Try living on $18,000 a year, even if you’re single, and tell me how much money you have left for any health care expenses, let alone insurance...

In terms of the disabled that qualify for the monthly stipend, how will these people get by with so little money? Where will they live? How will they eat?

These are not rhetorical questions.

And how about all the poor families who will get kicked off of Basic Health? Are their children not worth anything? Will some members of these families die from easily preventable illnesses?

Thirty-nine billion dollars may not be much in the overall scheme of things, but it means a heck of a lot to the people who will now go without.