LA Times: GOP lawmakers bring the budget pain home

[marmar]

GOP lawmakers bring the budget pain home
Many call for cutting public aid despite representing poor rural areas with the greatest percentage of need.

By Eric Bailey
June 13, 2009


Reporting from Merced, Calif. -- In the belly of the Central Valley, hard times have hit harder than just about anywhere else in America. But it's also a stronghold of Republicans ready to shrink the safety net.

One in five Merced County adults are out of work, home foreclosures run rampant and anti-poverty programs are stretched to the limit. The county welfare chief calls it California's Appalachia.

This also is a region represented in the statehouse budget brawl almost exclusively by anti-tax Republicans, whose push to downsize government collides with sobering reality -- a greater percentage of their constituents depend on health and welfare programs than anywhere else in California.

One in 12 residents of Merced County have tapped CalWorks, the state's welfare-to-work effort, double the per-capita use in Los Angeles County and five times the percentage in San Francisco.

But the region's Republican lawmakers hold fast to a pledge to tame the tax-and-spend cycle of California's Capitol and are backing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to slash programs for the poor. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gop-poor13-2009jun13,0,5016357.story

[IADEMO2004]

1. the Guardians Of Privilege never sleep and never change n/t

[Kerrytravelers]

2. The result of voting God-Guns-Gays exclusively w/o regard to one's own economic self-interest.

When will these people learn? How much do the rest of us have to suffer because they lack the basic common sense to vote in their own economic self-interest?

[SpiralHawk]

3. Republicons ignore the putrid fuit of republiconomics

As long as they got theirs, screw everyone else. 8 long years of republiconomics flushed the American economy down the crapper...Thanks a pantload, Republicon FAIL freaks.

[DBoon]

4. republicans thrive in semi-feudal economies

they need people to be impoverished and uneducated - otherwise how could they ever hang on to power?