Protecting Americas most vulnerable..from politics and crooked governors..video by:Cristal uehara

Published 2015-06-30

The Rauner budget slashes state spending by over $4 billion, much of the savings gleaned by eliminating or reducing eligibility for programs based in the Department of Human Services (DHS). Each cut will come with costs to families and individuals who need the state's help most. Moreover, many of the cut programs actually save the state money over time. Rauner's cuts are taking place against the backdrop of a bigger attack on disability. Too many right-wing politicians and pundits see disability as a wedge issue with which they can divide interest groups, pit people who need help against each other and rip apart the core social safety net. Meanwhile, they reassure their base, which is filled with individuals who also need help from the state, that only they really deserve benefits.
Like Rauner, other governors are cutting services in the name of austerity. Kansas, under Sam Brownback, has pushed disabled people off Medicaid, making services less effective and efficient. Scott Walker, in Wisconsin, has proposed cutting long-term care services in such a way as to limit individual choice of caregivers and service providers, empowering the healthcare industry and not disabled Americans.

Florida has gutted benefits to severely disabled individuals in workers' compensation cases and eliminated countless positions in the Department of Health. And that's all just at the state level. Nationally, the new Congress began the year with a sustained attack on Social Security Disability Insurance, which some analysts see as a way to threaten the whole foundation of Social Security.

Last December, House Republicans insisted that the ABLE act, a bill intended to help people with disabilities and their caregivers save money, only be offered to those who were disabled before the age of 26, a limitation aimed at excluding people who become disabled through work, disease, accident or age.