“Tolerating Poor People”: Republicans Explore New Moral Depths On Medicaid
As the lawsuits challenging the Affordable Care Act worked their way up to the Supreme Court, I always found the challenge to the expansion of Medicaid to be the strangest part. Quick context: the program provides insurance for poor people, splitting the cost between the federal government and the states. But the current rules say that each state gets to set its own eligibility standards, which meant that if you live in a state run by Democrats and you’re poor, you can get Medicaid, but if you live in a state run by Republicans, you have to be desperately poor to get Medicaid. For instance, in Mississippi, a family of four has to have a yearly gross income below a princely $9,828 to qualify. Because if a family is living high on the hog with their $10,000 a year, they aren’t really poor, right?
Fortunately, the Affordable Care Act fixed this, by changing Medicaid so that everyone with up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level ($30,657 for a family of four) would qualify. And to make things easier on the states, the bill provided that the federal government would pick up almost all of the tab. The federal government pays 100 percent of the cost of paying for the new enrollees through 2016, 95 percent in 2017, 94 percent in 2018, 93 percent in 2019, and 90 percent from then on. In other words, the federal government is saying to states, “Here’s a bunch of free money to insure a whole lot of your citizens, which will make them healthier and more productive.” And almost every state run by Republicans replied, “How dare you do such a thing to us! It’s unconstitutional! We’re suing!”
And unfortunately, the Supreme Court gave them the right to turn down the money, so each state gets to decide whether it wants to accept the expansion. The irony is that this change in Medicaid is much, much more valuable to the states that have been the stingiest with Medicaid up until now. Massachusetts, for instance, already sets Medicaid eligibility at 133 percent of the poverty level, so they get no new money. It’s the Republican states with Scroogian eligibility who will get the most benefit, insuring millions of their citizens at little cost. But they’re the ones who don’t want it.
It’s pretty obvious that many Republicans wish there was no such thing as Medicaid at all. But if they have to tolerate poor people getting health care, they want to make sure as few of those poor people get it as possible. Because after all, if you can take your kids to the doctor whenever they get sick, how are you going to learn that being poor proves how sinful you are?
When this all comes down in 2014, the Republican governors and legislators who choose to opt out of the Medicaid expansion shouldn’t be allowed to claim that it’s a budgetary issue, because it isn’t—it’s free money, as far as their state budgets are concerned. They’re already trying. Here’s Phil Bryant, the governor of Mississippi, saying that the state doesn’t have the money to cover the estimated 330,000 people in the state who would get insurance paid for by the federal government. Here are Republican officials in Florida, where around a million people could get coverage under the Medicaid expansion, pleased as punch that the Court gave them the opportunity to say “No coverage for you!” to those poor Floridians.
So these Republican officials will be saying to their own citizens, “The federal government is offering to give you free health insurance, but we won’t let you have it. Your health is less important than us making a statement about how much we hate the welfare state and how much we hate Barack Obama and everything he touches.” They believe that it’s better for a person to have no insurance at all than to get insurance from the government. That position is morally vile enough in the abstract, but when they’re actually confronted with a choice to make about whether to allow their citizens to have health insurance, some of them are going to say no. I struggle to find words to describe how despicable and cruel that is.
Now, it’s possible that once that money is actually being offered, the states will all say yes. That’s what Nancy Pelosi argued yesterday. But that depends on the Republican leadership of those states actually giving a crap about their poor citizens. Let’s just say we should believe it when we see it.
By; Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, June 29, 2012
“Legally Challenged”: Judge Allows Florida Voter Purge To Move Forward Despite Federal Law Forbidding It
Federal Judge Robert Hinkle rejected the Justice Department’s request for a temporary order suspending Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) effort to purge tens of thousands of names from his state’s voter roles. According to the AP, Judge Hinkle relied on highly questionable reasoningin order to do so:
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit earlier this month to halt the purge, saying it was going on too close to a federal election. U.S. officials also said the list used by Florida had “critical imperfections, which lead to errors that harm and confuse voters.”
Hinkle in ruling from the bench said federal laws are designed to block states from removing eligible voters close to an election. He said they are not designed to block voters who should have never been allowed to cast ballots in the first place.
If this AP report is accurate, then Judge Hinkle is simply wrong. Here is the text of the federal law at issue in this case:
A State shall complete, not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.
Although the law does include exceptions for voters who ask to be removed, felons, the mentally incapacitated and dead voters, none of those exceptions apply to this case. The law says that no state may engage in a Florida-style voter purge seeking to remove ineligible voters within 90 days of an election. Period.
Judge Hinkle’s apparent decision is not simply wrong as a matter of statutory text, it also defies common sense. No state should ever purge eligible voters from its voter rolls for reasons that should be obvious. The purpose of the federal law preventing purges of ineligible voters within 90 days of an election is to avoid a situation where a state wrongly flags an eligible voter as someone who cannot lawfully vote without providing that voter enough time to demonstrate that the state made a mistake. Hinkle’s apparently misreads this law to suggest that Florida is perfectly free to kick legal voters off its voter rolls so long as it does so more than three months before an election.
By: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, June 27, 2012
“Emboldened And Dangerous”: Florida Governor Rick Scott Vows To Keep His Voter Purge Going
Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) pre-election voter purge hasn’t had much success lately, but that didn’t stop him from going to a Tea Party Express event yesterday, urging far-right activists to help rally support for his scheme.
Wearing khakis, a blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his signature custom-made cowboy boots, Scott defended the purge and enlisted their aid getting President Obama’s administration to cooperate by granting access to a federal immigration database.
“Okay so the latest is who should get to vote in our state and in our country. People that are citizens of our country. It’s very simple, right? Who comes up with the idea that you get to vote if you’re not a citizen?” Scott asked near the end of a 15-minute speech at the Tallahassee Antique Car Museum.
As straw-men arguments go, Scott’s is a doozy. “Who comes up with the idea that you get to vote if you’re not a citizen?” Well, no one; the governor is attacking a line that no one is defending. Rather, the problem is Scott’s plan, though ostensibly about purging non-citizens from the voter rolls, has ended up unjustly targeting tens of thousands of eligible citizens, making this more of a voter-suppression plan than anything else.
Indeed, given that 87% of Scott’s purge list is made up of minorities, minority voters tend to support Democrats, and the scheme is being executed five months before Election Day, the partisan motivations behind the governor’s agenda is rather transparent.
Nevertheless, Scott vowed yesterday that he would not back down from his suppression tactics, and was reportedly emboldened by last week’s recall election in Wisconsin. In an unintentionally-hilarious twist, Scott was introduced yesterday by Tea Party Express co-founder Amy Kremer, who told the crowd, without a hint of irony, that the voter purge is necessary because, “If the Democrats cannot win it fair and square, they will steal it.”
The next question, of course, is what will happen among those who have the most control over this process: the county elections supervisors.
As Rachel explained last week, Scott can send purge lists to the counties, but it’s up to the county officials “to actually do the purging … and lately the county officials in Florida are not much in a mood for what the state is telling them to do.” Indeed, as of Friday, these 67 county election chiefs said they would not move forward with Scott’s purge plan because they lack confidence in the integrity of the governor’s list.
One county elections supervisor said, “We’re just not going to do this. I’ve talked to many of the other supervisors and they agree. The list is bad. And this is illegal.”
However, Maddow Blog commenter Luckton noted this morning that the scheme “is still being carried out by a few of the county supervisors,” who are buckling to pressure from the governor.
Also keep an eye on Scott’s next move, which may include filing suit against the Obama administration for not helping him purge more voters from the state’s rolls.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, June 11. 2012
“The Cleansing”: Rick Scott Prepares To Defy Justice Department, Continue Voter Purge In Florida
Florida Governor Rick Scott sent the strongest signal yet that he plans to defy the Department of Justice and continue purging registered voters the rolls. Last week, the Justice Department sent Scott a letter demanding an end the voter purgebecause it was in violation of federal law. His deadline for responding to the letter is today.
Although Florida has not formally responded to the Justice Department letter, a Scott administration spokesman strongly indicated to the Miami Herald that Governor Scott had no intention of ending the purge:
“Our letter will address the issues raised by DOJ while emphasizing the importance of having accurate voter rolls,” said Chris Cate, spokesman for Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, who’s in charge of the state’s elections division.
Cate would neither confirm nor deny what was in the state’s response, but he acknowledged that the state disagrees with the federal government and doesn’t plan to throw in the towel. “We know we’ve been acting responsibly,” he said…
“DOJ is making the same argument as the groups that have sent letters to us,” Cate said. “If we disagree with the interpretation — it doesn’t matter who’s raising it — we disagree with the interpretation”…
“We’ve been acting responsibly through this process,” Cate said. “And our letter will reiterate that while addressing the concerns raised by DOJ. We have continued our efforts to identify ineligible voters.”
It’s unclear what the practical impact of Governor Scott’s decision will be, however. All 67 county election supervisors, in light of the Department of Justice letter, have suspended executing the purge. Some have even reinstated voters purged previously. The local election supervisors, not the state, has the ultimate authority to remove names.
As ThinkProgress has documented, hundreds of eligible U.S. citizens — including two 91-year-old WWII veterans — have been wrongly targeted by the purge.
By: Judd Legum, Think Progress, June 6, 2012
“Voter Purging”: There’s A Lot Of Darkness In The Sunshine State
Florida ought to know better. And must do better, particularly on the issue of voting and discrimination.
But, then again, we are talking about Florida, the state of Bush v. Gore infamy and the one that will celebrate the birthday of Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederacy, with a statewide holiday on Sunday.
What am I getting at? This: Few states in the union have done more in recent years to restrict and suppress voting — particularly by groups who lean Democratic, such as young people, the poor and minorities — than Florida.
In May 2011, the state’s Republican-led Legislature passed and the Republican governor, Rick Scott, signed a sweeping election law that cut early voting short and imposed onerous burdens on voter registration groups by requiring them to turn in registration applications within 48 hours of the time they are signed or face fines.
The threat of fines has meant that many groups that traditionally registered voters in the state have abandoned the effort, and it appears to be contributing to fewer new registrations. According to a March analysis of registration data by The Times, “in the months since its new law took effect in May, 81,471 fewer Floridians have registered to vote than during the same period before the 2008 presidential election.”
But there is good news. On Thursday, a federal judge overturned the 48-hour deadline as unconstitutional, writing, in part, that “if the goal is to discourage voter-registration drives and thus also to make it harder for new voters to register, the 48-hour deadline may succeed.”
Recently, the state announced that it would begin another round of voter purging to ensure that no ineligible voters were mistakenly on the voter rolls. Seems noble enough. But the problem is that Florida is notoriously bad at purging.
As the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice pointed out last week: “In 2000, Florida’s efforts to purge persons with criminal convictions from the rolls led to, by conservative estimates, close to 12,000 eligible voters being removed” from the rolls. As most of us remember, George W. Bush beat Al Gore in the state of Florida that year, after the recounts and the Supreme Court stepped in, by 537 votes.
And as The Miami Herald reported on Thursday:
“So far, Florida has flagged 2,700 potential noncitizen voters and sent the list to county elections supervisors, who have found the data and methodology to be flawed and problematic. The list of potential noncitizen voters — many of whom have turned out to be lawful citizens and voters — disproportionately hits minorities, especially Hispanics.”
More good news: In his keynote address at the inaugural Faith Leaders Summit on Voting Rights, a joint effort by the Congressional Black Caucus and the Conference of National Black Churches, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. told the group:
“Congressman John Lewis may have described the reason for these concerns best, in a speech on the House floor last summer, when pointing out that the voting rights he worked throughout his life — and nearly gave his life — to ensure are, ‘under attack … [by] a deliberate and systematic attempt to prevent millions of elderly voters, young voters, students, [and] minority and low-income voters from exercising their constitutional right to engage in the democratic process.’ Not only was he referring to the all-too-common deceptive practices we’ve been fighting for years. He was echoing more recent fears and frustrations about some of the state-level voting law changes we’ve seen this legislative season.”
He didn’t mention Florida by name, but, on Thursday, the Department of Justice sent a letter to the Florida secretary of state demanding that they cease the purge.
Florida has more electoral votes than any other swing state, and the battle to win it — or steal it — will be epic because the election is likely to be another nail-biter, both nationally and in the state.
In an NBC-Marist poll of battleground states released last week, President Obama was leading Mitt Romney in the state 48 percent to 44 percent. But as NBC News pointed out, the president’s share was “below the 50 percent threshold usually considered safe haven for an incumbent president,” and Romney has narrowed the races in Florida and other battleground states since earlier in the year.
A Quinnipiac University Poll also released last week had Romney leading Obama by 6 points in Florida, although there has been some debate about the methodology of that poll.
We can’t predict a winner, but we must insist on a fair fight. Voter suppression can’t be allowed to overshadow democracy in the Sunshine State.
By: Charles Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, June 1, 2012
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