Posted: 02/22/10 16:04
by Dave Mindeman
Now whenever I talk about Pawlenty, I am accused of just being a partisan complainer. Trouble is I keep finding these outrageous actions by this governor and I am going to keep talking about them until somebody listens.
Here is yet another under the radar tactic.
As Pawlenty hits us with the GAMC veto, he doesn't elaborate on another of his budget tricks that directly affects it.
From Politics in Minnesota:
It turns out that, on top of that $387 million wild card (fed stim money), there’s another $120 million in one-time moneys in the governor’s budget solution. Generally speaking, these dollars are transfers from non-general fund sources to the general fund for budget-balancing purposes. “In some cases,” a legislative staffer explains on background, “they may be unspent balances in certain funds that are being grabbed. In others cases, the governor’s proposal reduces administrative spending that’s being done out of non-general fund accounts by 3 percent. Then he takes that savings and transfers it to the general fund.”
The two biggest sources of the $120 million are:
1) the Health Care Access Fund, which funds MinnesotaCare (slightly more than $48 million);.......
Here's the correlation.
Pawlenty says that the people on GAMC will ultimately be taken care of by shifting them to MinnesotaCare when the GAMC program runs out.
Three problems:
1) The application process to switch will probably take at least 2 months to complete -- if they have the ability to even do it.
2) MNCare has copays. Many of these people will not even have the few dollars in co-pays it would take to get their medication. When you're living on $200 a month (or less) -- $12 in co-pays is 6% of your income.
3) So, the third problem comes to this. MnCare had a surplus. Maybe they could have helped some of these people for a certain period of time. At least until the extra funds ran down. But Pawlenty is robbing the surplus as well. Using the excess to pay for general budget items.
Pawlenty wipes out their health and welfare -- then he double dips into their potential future help.
This is insane.
