aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Santorum’s a weasel II

Last week congress dramatically cut programs aimed at low-income Americans. Senator Santorum framed it this way:

“What we’ve done here today is we’ve made some changes to those programs that make those programs better, more efficient and more targeted to the people in need,” Santorum said. “That is not cutting benefits to those who are entitled to entitlements; it is making those programs work better and in the context of more fiscal responsibility.”

Here’s an example of making a program “work better:”

[Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Director Bob] Greenstein says one of the most potentially damaging provisions would require those applying for Medicaid to present proof of citizenship—either a birth certificate or passport.

Many low-income Americans don’t have access to their birth certificates—or don’t have one at all.

For example, African Americans born in the south in the 1930s and ‘40s—as many as 20 percent, according to one study—don’t have birth certificates because hospitals wouldn’t accept black women in labor.

As a result, Greenstein says, ”We’re facing the prospect of significant numbers of elderly black Americans being thrown off of Medicaid because they can’t provide a birth certificate—because they weren’t born in a hospital due to discrimination.”

At the same time the senate did find $100 million a year for five years for Santorum’s initiative to promote marriage and encourage fatherhood.

RELATED: The senator’s change of heart on ID earned him a warning from the American Family Association that conservatives can no longer trust him; they say “he needs to be careful.”