Sunday was Mother’s Day, when we honor the many ways our mothers care for us and shape who we are. Styles of celebrating vary from family to family, but the fundamental message is the same: Raising children is hard and important work that benefits us and our society and deserves recognition.
Sadly, thousands of Maine mothers got a different message this Mother’s Day after the Republican majority on the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee voted out a budget that slashed funding for family planning clinics, child care subsidies, Head Start, health insurance for low-income parents and prescription drugs for the poor elderly.
These cuts are mean spirited and irresponsible. The cumulative effect will be profound, and it will haunt Maine and her people for decades to come.
Let’s start with the cuts to family planning clinics, which provide not only contraceptive care but also basic preventive health services to low-income women who cannot otherwise get treatment.
Since a dollar spent by the state on family planning will save at least $4 in future costs, the $400,000 cut today will cost at least $1.6 million dollars down the road. Add in the cut to screenings for sexually transmitted disease. Now recognize that 7,000 19- and 20-year-olds are losing health care coverage. The results are entirely predictable — more disease and more babies born to those least prepared to care for them.
Caring for an infant is demanding, exhausting work, and the Home Visiting Program helps new parents adjust to their responsibility, helping to head off the type of tragedy that took place last week in Arundel, but 750 fewer families will receive that service each year going forward. We’ll save money, but at what cost?
Maine’s poverty rate for children under 5 has spiked above the national average, with nearly 60 percent of those children living in a family headed by a single mother. Those women didn’t get pregnant by themselves.
Child care subsidies allow those low-income parents to work while ensuring consistent care for their kids. Similarly, Head Start is a proven, effective program that prepares children to enter school ready to learn while allowing their low-income parents to earn a living. These investments have so proven themselves that business leaders and law enforcement professionals endorse them. Both programs have been slashed.
Now consider the elimination of health insurance coverage for 14,500 low-income working parents following an earlier cut to a similar number of people. That’s 28,000 low-income Mainers, most of them mothers. Many will lose both health insurance and child care at the same time. Do we really think they will be able to continue to work, or is it much more likely that they will slide deeper into poverty and become even more reliant on public assistance? This is the very definition of budgeting that is penny wise and pound foolish.
Finally, we come to the effect on the elderly. Maine’s poverty rate for people over 65, two-thirds of whom are women, exceeds the national average. Just in time for Mother’s Day, our political leaders voted to cut the Drugs for the Elderly program, leaving an estimated 1,500 frail elders challenged to pay for essential prescription drugs.
Don’t let anyone tell you it had to be this way. Budgets are about making choices, and our leaders have repeatedly chosen to implement tax cuts. Now they are slashing vital preventive services to women, children and the elderly to pay for them.
Many of us measure our success as parents by how our children treat other people. Will legislators voting on the budget this week make a choice their mothers would be proud of?
Eliza Townsend is executive director of the Maine Women’s Lobby.
You’re from the “Maine Women’s Lobby”. You are being paid to influence legislators to vote for special interests, and just because it happens to be women, doesn’t mean you aren’t just another lobbyist screwing the people.
Why shouldn’t the Maine Women’s Lobby lobby for women? Why is that any different than the NRA lobbying for gun owners? At least Maine Women’s Lobby is doing something positive.
Lobbyists advocate the issues of their constituent organization. They’re not inherently evil. Legislators don’t have to heed lobbyists advice. However, if a legislator runs on stances that “screw the people”, they’re more likely to take financing and be influenced by lobbyist that represent organizations that advocate “screwing the people”. Thus endeth the lesson.
How you can equate Ms. Townsend and the Maine Women’s Lobby with someone like that is beyond me. Happy Mother’s Day.
This is a far cry from the corrupt corporate toadie lobbyists out to destroy the poor and middle class and give everything to the 1% rich. You are dangerously uninformed.
Ya using our vital tax dollars
The GOP doesn’t value women, not if you judge by how much they think child-raising and housekeeping are worth: zero. The GOP claims that the government shouldn’t provide money to women who raise children, even though it’s one of the toughest and most important jobs in the world.
Worse, the GOP thinks such women are lazy money-grubbers. In other words, the GOP treats motherhood as if it is worth nothing monetarily and is an excuse to get a hand out.
Did I mention that the GOP is mostly led by men?
The GOP has turned into nothing at all but the corporate toadie TeaRadical Party. And we will CRUSH them bigtime in November.
Wishful thinking. Good luck.
I know a lot of Tea Party supporter and none are in the corporate sector. They are High School/college students, teachers, store clerks, construction workers and other plain everyday people struggling to get what they have. These Corporate toadies you speak simply don’t exist.
Geeze your nice. I would have pointed out that when Sen. Snowe announced retirement the democrats ran off the only woman who wanted to replace her for their ticket.
This is a generalized thoughtless statement. The State is not in the business to pay women to make and raise babies! If this was the case then they should be paying stud fees to the men. There is no doubt that child-rearing is a very important job but it is equally important to have the means and the way to be able to do so without depending on handouts. Your statement equates such women as nothing but chattel that need to be tended to. In some respects this is true but they should be striving to lift themselves to be better than that…instead many moan because the handouts are ending.
The problem with judgmental know-it-all’s is that they have little difficulty identifying problems, but tend to rely on magic when demanding solutions.
The State may not be in the business of “paying women to make and raise babies!”, but it is absolutely responsible for making sure that children born in our society have a shot in life by providing them with access to food, healthcare and a safe living environment.
The condescending, paternalistic demand that poor women simply need to ‘strive’ to better themselves can only be made by someone who is so blinded by ignorance that he can’t see anything but black or white. Your assumption that people living in poverty or struggling to care for their kids are not ‘striving’ is convenient, because it allows you to blame the mother and walk away. Like all magic, your solution is just an illusion.
The GOP solution is there for all to see. Work for the man while living in abject poverty and then when you become ill die quickly so you aren’t a burden on the state. Thank you GOP!
Dr. you need to take your medication, your Dendrites mis-firing is showing.
They should also include they’re own healthcare benefits in these cuts.
I looked up their benefits and I could find where they received healthcare benefits from the State. Can you provide this documentation or is this an empty statement and they don’t receive healthcare?
6. Health and Dental Insurance
Legislators are eligible for health and dental insurance coverage under the group health insurance plan available to state employees. Health insurance coverage is provided through a point-of-service managed care plan with comprehensive benefits, including preventative care, hospital and medical services and prescription drugs. Co-payments are required for office visits to health care providers, for certain services and for prescription drugs. The State pays 100% of the health insurance premium for legislators and 50% of the premium for their dependents. The health insurance provider will bill the legislator directly, with billing sent to the legislator’s home address. The legislator is responsible for the prompt payment of premiums.
Dental insurance is available to legislators and their dependents. The State pays 100% of the dental insurance premium for legislators; legislators are responsible for paying dependent premiums. The dental insurance provider will bill the legislator directly, with billing sent to the legislator’s home address. The legislator is responsible for the prompt payment of premiums.
“When my daddy was sick in the hospital and dying he said, “Son, get my britches, I’m goin home.” I reminded him that he’d get better care in the hospital but daddy said, “ I want to go back among our people where they know when a man is sick and they care when he dies.”
That is the difference between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats do care when a man is sick, and they care when a man dies, and Democrats care year in and year out.
Republicans care too…just before every election time.”
Sen. Lyndon Johnson 1960
Nothing’s changed.
Actually things have changed, most of these democrats from the era have turned into Republicans. This was one of the more moronic statements (Pres.) Johnson made in his career but at the time it was suppose to be a humorous remark reaching out to the people.
Cowboy, fortunately those Democrat’s in the 60’s went on to become Reagen Democrat’s when we saw what the political system had turned into back in the 80’s. That the GOP, which the Reagen Democrat’s supported, has now turned into a bunch of screaming neo-facists radical’s, some coming dangerously close to espousing neo-Nationalist principles (those of you old enough remember that, correct ? Nationalist Socialism ? Gee, the Bohemian Corporal is at it again, even after 50 years.) is now driving us back to remember just how close the Country is to turning into another Germany in the 1930’s. Every time that the State GOP, and their now for-better-or-worse partner’s the Tea Partyr’s open their mouth they give us ALL a serious reason to stop, think about, and ask ourselves what is probably going to be the dominant question for the next generation, that being ‘Is the GOP’s position what I really want my kid’s to live and work under or do I want them to be able to live as they decide for themselves without someone deciding for them ?’ . I, for one, do not need to be lead around by the nose like some dumb Dexter, Guernsey or Hereford. Been there, seen it, where it lead and it’s effect’s. As has been said ” Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me’. Not this time. And folk’s wonder why Maine has so many Independent’s. It’s easy, We aren’t getting fooled by the Big Brass band anymore.
And if you look at real Christian values, you will see that it is the Democratic platform that most adheres to the teachings of Jesus. Republicans have become the party of hate, greed, and emotional violence.
The Maine Women’s Lobby, a group that’s supposedly focused on equality, seems a bit too concerned with maintaining welfare programs that disproportionately benefit women over men. I’m pleased to know that my legislators and governor are representing my views in Augusta.
Perhaps welfare programs should be designed to benefit those most in need rather than just splitting the benefits equally between the sexes.
Somewhere in the cycle somebody has made terrible choices. It is unfortunate that tax payer has to pay for 100’s if not 1000’s of women who for one reason or another can not support themselves or their children. If people (not just women) can not make a living in a place where they can support themselves or their children, then they need move somewhere where they can do so. I for one am not one that wants to pay a woman for raising a child that I had no part in making. These people need to start taking care of themselves instead of looking for a free handout. In the past the State has played the role of welfare enablers, it’s time this nonsense ends and people start taking responsibility for themselves.
Great advice Dr. Cowboy. Can the poor and unemployed people in Maine count on you for the money to rent the U-Haul to move to where the work is? And where exactly is the “work” these days? Can you offer them a destination? What about the first months rent and security deposit in their new home. Can they count on you for that as well? Maybe you could offer them some sage advice about how to implement your plan? What about all the people in Maine who work for WalMart, McDonald’s, Marden’s, KMart, etc. that need welfare to bridge the gap between what their cheap employers pay and what it takes to survive in 2012 America? Should they all move too?
There is no living wage for those working at the companies you list. I recall when people would make the (correct) claim that the state and federal government subsidized these corporations. The reaction? Rather than force companies to pay a “living” wage the government chose to reduce/stop public assistance. Now more people are worse off than ever. Thank you GOP!
Unfortunately, you can’t force people to have a conscience. Until we can figure out a way to do that, expect more of the same, especially when there is money involved.
The current admin is supposed to be “all for the children”.
More liberal bs. The DHHS could merely layoff the dead weight of it’s bloated workforce or cut the salaries and benefits paid to it’s overpaid administration and there would be no cuts in assistance.
But, as with teachers and unions, I don’t expect these folks to do what is in the best interest of the people they supposedly help.
If Brenda Harvey had not left the department’s accounting in shambles. Remember in 2008 all the DHHS scandals. All that money we are still paying back to the federal government because we could not account for it. Well It’s 2012 and we are still paying. Between the drop in funds because of mismanagement and the intrest from back dues we pay more now to the feds than the acutal citizan recives in any one program. Our 2012 AUdit so far is failing.