Pennsylvania: cruel SSI cuts

[Communist]

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SSI cut could be Pa.'s cruelest yet (http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/82535432.html)

http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/53213183/highresheadshot_bigger.jpg (http://twitter.com/myantkinney)

By Monica Yant Kinney (http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/monica_yant_kinney/)
Inquirer Columnist

In Chester County, disabled and elderly people can spend $20 riding paratransit to and from the grocery store.

That might not seem like much, but factor in $80 just to travel for food when you live on only $600 a month. Then imagine getting by with even less.

Beginning Feb. 1, 340,000 of Pennsylvania's most vulnerable citizens will be nudged even closer to the edge. They are the poor elderly, the blind middle-aged, the disabled young - folks in the city and suburbs who receive federal Supplemental Security Income and, like those in most other states, a modest state supplement because they absolutely cannot work.

A previously undisclosed detail of Pennsylvania's brutal budget deal calls for slashing the state's already modest $27 to $42 monthly SSI supplement by 20 percent to 25 percent. Individuals will lose $5 a month, couples $10.
For some, that's nothing, the cost of a skinny latte or a movie.

For others, it may mean skipping a meal, forgoing medical care, or worse.

"We heard a lot during the debate that no one was going to be hurt if they just cut waste to balance the budget," said Sharon Ward, director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center. "But we didn't cut waste. We took food out of the mouths of the poor, old, and blind."

The view from below

In October, Gov. Rendell signed a $27.8 billion budget 101 days in the making. There was no ceremony because, as the governor noted, "there's no reason to celebrate."

The recession budget hacked away at hundreds of programs and eliminated many.

An agreement to legalize casino table games - to generating an anticipated $200 million in fees, plus untold tax revenue - garnered bold headlines.

Squeezing the SSI supplement to save a mere $22 million a year did not.

Enraged advocates learned of the decision only last week.

"We know there are no hidden pots of money in this budget, but there are priorities. And the most vulnerable people in this state should be a priority," said Ray Landis, state advocacy manager for AARP. "We think it's appalling to attack the poorest of the poor."

Even officials at the Department of Public Welfare were kept in the dark about the details.

"We don't know how, when, or where the deal came from," said Linda Blanchette, deputy secretary in DPW's Office of Income Maintenance, charged with the grim task of taking money from 40,000 seniors and 300,000 disabled people, including 67,000 children.

"The average person - and I include legislators - is unaware of how little these people get," she told me. "We're talking about living on $500 or $600 a month. Until you understand that, you can't understand the impact of a $5 cut."

Undoing the damage?

Nearly a third of the state's SSI recipients live in Philadelphia, but close to 30,000 reside in the four-county suburbs, where almost everything comes at a premium.

Take Democratic State Sen. Daylin Leach's district, which spans some of the toniest and neediest parts of Montgomery and Delaware Counties.
"If you live in South Ardmore," he said, "the nearest grocery stores are Food Source and Whole Foods."

Translation: costly cucumbers, presuming you can get to them.

"Co-pays for paratransit are up to $10 one way for five to 10 miles," explained Margaret Rybinski of the Cerebral Palsy Association of Chester County, who worries that her 100 clients may run out of money at the end of a month and go without.

To that end, she's urging clients and family members to agitate during DPW's public comment period. "If there's enough outrage, we might change their mind."

It can't hurt to holler. Poor people already lost big bucks in this budget.
Maybe someone will throw them a few pennies in the next one.

Monica Yant Kinney: Public Comment

To comment on the Supplemental Security Income cuts, write to Edward J. Zogby, Bureau of Policy, Health and Welfare Building, Room 431, Harrisburg, Pa. 17105, or e-mail ezogby(AT)state.pa.us ([email protected]). The disabled may call 1-800-654-5984
(TDD users) or 1-800-654-5988 (voice).

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[Communist]

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PENNSYLVANIA
SSI cuts target state’s poor (http://www.workers.org/2010/us/ssi_cuts_0218/)

By Betsey Piette
Philadelphia
Feb 12, 2010
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Nearly 200 demonstrators, many in wheelchairs, gathered at the Broad Street Ministry on Feb. 3 to march to City Hall in protest of $22 million in cuts to Supplemental Security Income. The cuts took effect in Pennsylvania on Feb. 1.

Many participants in this “funeral procession for justice” wore black or carried mock coffins and tombstone-shaped placards, underscoring the deadly aspect this devastating blow will have for 340,000 of the state’s most vulnerable residents, 67,000 of whom are children.

The state has tried to downplay the monthly SSI decrease of $5 for individuals and $10 for families as insignificant. The official announcement about the cuts was not even made until two weeks before they were scheduled to take effect, even though the state’s budget was approved in September.

For people with disabilities, seniors and children on SSI already struggling to survive on $600 a month or less, these reductions could mean the inability to afford the co-payment on an important medicine or to buy tokens to get to school. For people with incomes already just 77.7 percent of the federal poverty level, the loss of even $5 can be devastating.

Many elderly and disabled in the state rely on paratransit services, which can cost $20 for just one round trip. For families with children, $10 less a month — the cost of a box of cereal and a gallon of milk — might mean skipping yet another meal.

Nearly one-third of the state’s SSI recipients live in Philadelphia, where very few supermarkets are easily accessible without a car. For the 30,000 others living in the surrounding suburbs, grocery options are often limited to higher-priced stores like Whole Foods.

Speakers at the rally noted that as Pennsylvania state legislators and Gov. Ed Rendell are taking money from the poorest in the state, plans were dropped to tax corporations that are rapidly expanding drilling for natural gas. These companies are using the environmentally hazardous process of hydraulic fracturing.

Rally organizers handed out hundreds of fliers to people along the march route urging them to call Gov. Rendell and area state legislators to reverse the cuts.

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[Communist]

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Fears that Rendell's budget shortchanges needy (http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/84368247.html)

By Amy Worden (http://search.philly.com/?cat=site&q=amy%20worden)
Inquirer Harrisburg Bureau

HARRISBURG - Battered by deep cuts last year, groups that offer services to the disabled, the elderly, and children are wincing at what they see in Gov. Rendell's latest proposed budget. Rendell, delivering his eighth and final budget address on Tuesday, announced plans to trim some areas that touch the most vulnerable, such as literacy programs and disability payments for people living below the poverty line.

Small though they may be, the proposed reductions - along with the budget's reliance on hundreds of millions in federal recovery funds not yet approved by Congress - strike fear in the hearts of agencies that deliver food, health care, job training, transportation, addiction counseling, and child care to Pennsylvania's neediest.

"Rendell has always avoided hitting the poorest in the state," said Jonathan Stein, chief legal counsel for Philadelphia-based Community Legal Services. "This is contrary to his efforts over the last seven years."

Rendell's $29 billion spending plan contains nips and tucks across the board for most agencies, and no restoration of funding for some departments that took substantial hits last year, such as the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

Not so for basic education, Rendell's signature issue in recent years. In his budget address to the General Assembly, he asked for a 3.7 percent increase in education funding, including an additional $355 million to build on successes of prior years.

But that increase, amid a tightening of purse strings elsewhere, troubles some advocates for low-income children's needs. Not that they oppose more school aid - rather, they worry that it's at the expense of other programs directly affecting children.

Child advocate Cathleen Palm says Rendell's plan misses the connection between a healthy breakfast or a violence-free home and children's performance in school and the likelihood of ending up in prison.

"No one is saying that it's a bad thing to invest in education," said Palm, a child advocate in Berks County who tracks state and federal legislation. "But there is almost an insensitivity to the realities of kids and families. If kids come to school hungry, they won't do well."

Rendell, through a spokesman, defended his plan's commitment to lower-income populations and its investment in education.

All told, the proposed hikes in education-related spending add up to $483 million, compared with a $548 million increase for services to the disabled, the elderly, and children, Rendell said.

"Education affects everything that we do," said his press secretary, Gary Tuma. "It goes far beyond the benefits of a good education. . . . It has an impact on our crime rate, our economy, and the attractiveness of our state to business because of the skill of our workforce."

Palm and others point to proposed cuts in money the state parcels out to counties to help pay for everything from public transportation to food services to addiction counseling. If Rendell gets his way, these funds will be cut to $25 million, down from $29 million in the current budget and more than $33 million the year before.

And the latest cut comes at a time when higher unemployment is driving up the demand for such aid.

Then there's the hoped-for help from Washington that the proposed budget is counting on: money contained in federal funding bills that may or may not reach President Obama's desk.

"Federal funding, particularly with this Congress, is hard to bank on," said Palm, in an interview minutes after the Senate agreed on a jobs bill - but not on added Medicaid funding that Palm and others had hoped for.

High on Stein's list of hurts is Rendell's proposed $9 million cut in Supplemental Security Income funds - the SSI checks that help 345,000 aged, blind, or disabled Pennsylvanians (including 67,000 children) afford food, clothing, and shelter.

On Feb. 1, SSI recipients saw their monthly checks (typically about $600) dip by $5 to $10, thanks to cuts in the last budget - the one Rendell and the legislature approved in October, 101 days late.

Those SSI cuts, which originated in the Republican-controlled state Senate last year, live on in the Democratic governor's 1,070-page proposal for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

The proposed $5-to-$10 cuts per monthly SSI check barely pay for a couple of large drinks at a Starbucks. But Stein, a veteran advocate for the needy, said the amounts loom large for SSI recipients, all of whom fit the federal definition of poverty: for a family of four, income less than $22,000 a year.

Stein and others are planning a rally at the Capitol on March 16 to call for restoring the SSI funding.

As executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, Doug Hill represents officeholders. But some of his concerns about the budget echo those of advocates for the needy.

Money for court services is getting cut, he said; so is money for farmlands preservation. And he offers context for what he calls "nominal" increases elsewhere: Funding levels in many categories have stayed flat since 2002.

"It's a bare-bones budget at best," Hill said, adding that his group, too, frets about what Congress will do on federal aid. What if, for example, counties wind up unable to afford programs for children at risk?
"If we are not helping abused kids," Hill said, "that's not tenable."

Then there are libraries. Their funding is nicked by 2 percent in Rendell's plan; last year's 20 percent cut forced many to cut hours and staff.

"It boggles my mind that there is this disconnect about what is education," Glenn Miller, executive director of the Pennsylvania Library Association, said last week.

He bemoaned the slashing of funds for POWER Library, a database that 412 of Pennsylvania's 500 school districts use for everything from teachers' lesson plans to an online encyclopedia for students.

The cuts are coming even as demand for library services is "bursting at the seams," Miller said. "We're all about education and we want to help, but you can't with the legs cut out from under you."

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To read Gov. Rendell's proposed state budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1, go to http://go.philly.com/pabudget

[Uppercut]

This really is Sad. PA is getting hammered with budget cuts, hospital closings, etc..
Of course, we're in the middle of a recession and there isn't much Rendell can do for the time being.
If we want to solve this problem, we're going to have to deal with the Fed, Insurance companies, and Wall Street. I'm just stating the obvious, but it's high time we see more mass movements across the country (besides the teabag party). We shouldn't have to put up with this corruption anymore.

[Communist]

It's a real mess. Things are terrible here and all over...
There's nothing Rendell would do anyway, sad to say.