All three major state players have now released their proposals for what should happen to funding for health care and human services during this state’s latest budget deficit. The Governor would eliminate General Assistance and end income assistance to thousands of families with disabled parents and children on the Minnesota Family Investment Program. The House would cut what is already deep-poverty level assistance to some families, cut funding that has helped create short-term skill-building jobs and cut funding for services to families that turn to General Assistance. But the Senate shows it is possible to build a budget that makes no cuts to MFIP and General Assistance. Nor does the Senate make the devastating cuts to mental health services the House proposes. Nneither the House nor Senate cut off health care coverage to adults without children on Minnesota Care.

The next steps: one more committee in the House has to vote on the House’s proposed Health and Human Services budget and then it will be up (maybe later next week) for the full House to vote on it. The Senate has to move its budget proposals through committees in the Senate. Once both the Senate and the House have approved their version of the budget, there will be a conference process to develop an agreement on the budget so it can be sent to the Governor.

Both the House and Senate’s budget proposals include proposals to move people from General Assistance Medical Care to Medical Assistance, now possible because of health care reform. The advantage to such a move would be that the federal government pays half the cost and the coverage is much more complete – a significant advantage in light of the fact that most hospitals are declining to take part in what they see as a deeply underfunded General Assistance Medical Care program that emerged from the negotiations between the legislature and the Governor after his veto. How that question is resolved will be a critical part of the negotiations for the Health and Human Services budget as it moves forward.

We will post more detailed information on our website in the next 24 hours. And we will be giving Affirmative Options members ways to weigh in with legislators to ensure that those who are unemployed, ill and disabled and who have to turn to General Assistance and MFIP do not find the meager resources offered cut even more – especially during this recession.

Thank you for all that you have done so far – it is making a difference.

The Human Services budget committee of the MN House of Representatives released its budget proposals mid-day today:

• There are no cuts proposed to General Assistance – in contrast to the Governor’s proposal to eliminate the program;
• But there are more than $9.5 million in cuts to the Minnesota Family Investment Program.

The cuts to MFIP cut the already deep poverty-level assistance the state offers families in crisis and cuts funding away from the job creation initiative that has paid for skill building jobs with private employers, non-profits and local government.

Specifically:

• Families on MFIP who live in subsidized housing would have their MFIP assistance cut by about $100 a month. (According to last year’s numbers, when Governor Pawlenty put forward this proposal, about 5,000 families would be hit with this cut.)
• When parents get jobs to take them off assistance would lose that assistance earlier: instead of helping families’ earnings reach 15% above poverty before eliminating the MFIP assistance, the House proposal would support families to only 10% above the poverty line.
• The value of a car that families could own and still be eligible for MFIP would be reduced to $7,500. This impacts any family trying to maintain a reliable car – but will be felt in particular by families who have exhausted their unemployment insurance in this recession and who have to next turn to MFIP.
• The job creation initiative that more than doubled the number of people put into paid jobs from the beginning to the end of 2009 will lose $4 million under the House proposal – at a time when every single job creation strategy is needed. Minnesota has been using welfare to work funds to subsidize short-term, skill building jobs.

These cuts are unnecessary: The federal government included emergency welfare-to-work funds in the stimulus bill in order to avoid cutting away at the safety net for very low income children and their parents. Minnesota still has some of that money available, but the House budget proposal –like Governor Pawlenty’s – moves $28 million of that money into the tax budget, so that the tax budget can provide $28 million in state general funds for budget cuts.

But you are making a difference!
The calls you made. The e-mails you sent. Those of you who showed up today – all of that has made a difference. Together with our friends and allies in the Stand Together Minnesota campaign you helped prevent cuts to General Assistance. And we will ultimately work to prevent the cuts to MFIP as well. None of these proposals are final. There are most steps in the House of Representatives and Tuesday morning, the Senate human services budget committee will release its budget proposals.

The House cuts are not as deep as the Governor’s cuts. But our goal is NO CUTS.

Let's save GA, EGA, and MFIP!

After a year-long fight on General Assistance Medical Care, the Governor is once again proposing to target those of our friends and neighbors who are seriously ill or disabled and living on very low incomes. He wants to:

• Eliminate General Assistance - that provides $203 a month in income support to adults unable to work because of very serious illness or disability; and
• Take income assistance away from 7,000 families who have a parent or child with disabilities and are on the Minnesota Family Investment Program, leaving those families to live on disability support only at deep poverty levels. (Another 900 families in which the parent of a child with disabilities or the spouse of someone with disabilities would lose all or much of their child care assistance, jeopardizing their ability to continue working.)
• He unalloted the Emergency General Assistance which provides one-time emergency help to keep adults from becoming homeless or for those who are homeless to get re-established in stable housing.

The Minnesota House Health & Human Services Committee will be deciding in the next few days whether to accept or reject the Governor's proposals. If your legislator is on that committee, call her or him this week.  Find out who represents you.

"Please protect funding for General Assistance, Emergency General Assistance, and MFIP families"

Please let me know after you've sent your email, or bcc me!

The proposal to eliminate General Assistance – another effort to strip those with disabilities and low incomes of survival-level help:

Who uses General Assistance? About 33,000 adults with disabilties or incapacitating illnesses who are living on less than $300 a month. They have serious illnesses, physical disabilities, blindness , low IQs, serious mental illnesses, and/or are elderly and/or homeless. They do not have children living with them. Some are teenagers living on their own with no custodial families.

What is General Assistance? Up to $203 a month in assistance for an adult and up to $260 for married couples.

What is the Governor’s proposal? To eliminate this assistance and replace it with an emergency program that offers once-a-year help. The Governor eliminated exactly that program – Emergency General Assistance – with his unallotments last year. (The Governor would continue the part of General Assistance that pays for people in group homes.)

Isn’t an emergency program a good idea? Emergency programs work when one-time assistance can help people out of an immediate crisis. But one-time help is pointless if there is no income to pay the next set of bills.

Aren’t these just people who move to Minnesota to get on our assistance programs? No. According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, 94% of the people who were new to General Assistance in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is available) had lived in Minnesota had least a year.

Aren’t we just encouraging dependency? Most people use General Assistance for short periods of time: 43% use it for less than six months at a time and over a nine year period the average time on General Assistance was 20 months. This makes sense: because 64% of the people who turn to General Assistance are incapacitated with illness. General assistance supports people through a period of serious illness when they cannot earn other income.

Don’t people just claim they are ill or disabled to get General Assistance? No. A medical or mental health professional has to verify the condition and that it has been present for at least 30 days.

With the state’s budget crisis, don’t we have to focus on costs that are growing more expensive every year? The forecast anticipates less than a 1% increase in costs (0.7% in the 2010-2011 biennium and 0.8% in the 2012-2013 biennium.) The forecast calls them “small increases”. (p.18, Minnesota Department of Human Services Forecast, Feb. 2010).

Minnesota has not increased the assistance people on General Assistance receive since 1986. General Assistance accounts for only 1.1% of the Human Services budget – and only 0.1% of the overall state general fund spending. Caseloads have grown in proportion to the growing backlog in the federal system for determining whether someone is eligible for federal disability income.

This cut generates a $14.6 million savings in 2011, $19.8 million in 2012 and a $17.7 million savings in 2013. This includes accounting for $5.9 million lost in federal reimbursements next biennium. A number of the people on General Assistance are found eligible for federal Supplemental Security Income for the Disabled and the federal government reimburses the state the cost of General Assistance during the application period.

Click here for a one page PDF with this information that you can print.