Beginning in the 1940’s, my grandfather served as a University City fireman. His black steel helmet – dented, scraped and in couple of places scorched – evidenced the dangers of that job.
In that same era, Ray Bradbury wrote of another group of firemen, those who kicked-in doors and burned books:
A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from it. — Fahrenheit 451
The Missouri Department of Social Services has a hard job, delivering vital assistance to struggling families. For decades thousands of employees, acting as case managers even if that wasn’t their official title, helped people navigate a treacherous and complicated bureaucratic world to get the food, medical care and other things they needed.
That was then. Today, well, DSS stands committed to kicking people – especially children – off benefit programs.
Sound harsh?
- Missouri has shed, proportionally, more kids from Medicaid than most any other state. When asked why, state officials claim the great state economy is reducing the rolls.
- DSS claimed in the official Fiscal Note on Senate Bill 4 that a work tracking requirement would result in 50,000 kids losing food stamps.
- Thanks to strict time limits, unsuccessful employment assistance for parents and unreachable staff, the number of children helped by Temporary Assistance in December 2018 was 69% lower than the number helped in December 2013.
The new budget proposed by Missouri’s accidental governor calls for better than a $300 million reduction in core funding for Medicaid (officially, MO HealthNet or MHN). And, the governor and the head of Medicaid – former Speaker of The House Todd Richardson – both swore that Missouri would never expand Medicaid. Since the greatest portion of the Medicaid rolls are children under age 18 (one in ten Missouri citizens is a child on Medicaid), not expanding Medicaid hurts kids the most.
Again, this is not an accident. Slashing benefit programs has long been a goal of right wing lobbyists and non-think tanks such as the Foundation for Government Accountability, the Heartland Institute and the Heritage Foundation.
My personal belief remains that powerful, rich forces want to keep many Americans so poor that they have to work crappy jobs for lousy wages. Scuttling direct assistance to struggling families is part of a movement which includes Right To Work, destruction of workplace and environmental protections and the end of personal privacy. In other words, hurt others so that you prosper.
Just as in Ray Bradbury’s bleak future where firemen start fires, today the primary duty of staff at the Department of Social Services is to deny help to the needy.
And, as always, it’s the kids who get hurt the most.
Over the next 11 weeks the Missouri legislature will enact the state’s budget for the next Fiscal Year and consider measures to hurt benefit programs.
Let them know that you’re watching.
Glenn