HARRISBURG – As members of the influential House Rules Committee, Majority Whip Stan Saylor (R-Windsor Township) and Rep. Seth Grove (R-Dover), today voted to strip out a section of the 2013-14 state budget that would have expanded the already bloated federal welfare program known as Medicaid to unsustainable levels.
The Senate expansion measure would increase the state's Medicaid welfare roles from 1 in 6 Pennsylvanians to 1 in 4, even though Pennsylvania already spends $7,400 per Medicaid recipient, far more than the $4,000-$5,000 per recipient in other states. A recent House hearing on the matter revealed that expanding this welfare program will require the Commonwealth's taxpayers to pony up as much as $5.8 billion in new revenues in the first 10 years alone.
Medicaid is a federal welfare program that pays out benefits to people whose incomes fall below a certain threshold. Unfortunately, like many entitlement programs mandated to Pennsylvania, the federal government has never met its obligation to provide enough money to cover the programs, forcing Pennsylvania taxpayers to pick up the tab.
Given that the national unemployment rate remains above an unacceptable 7 percent even after the White House and congressional Democrats borrowed another $800 billion for a failed "stimulus" program, Saylor and Grove could not in good conscience allow the tax-and-spend wing of our state Senate to sacrifice yet more of our children's futures.
"Those who are under the misguided notion that the federal government will fund this expansion as promised need only look at the track record," Saylor said. "When the federal government imposed special education standards on Pennsylvania, the promise was to fund it at 40 percent, but the current level of funding is only 17 percent.
More recently, as a part of ObamaCare, Pennsylvania set up the temporary Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) under assurances this federal program would be funded with federal dollars. But on May 10, the state was advised that it would either have to end the program, or begin funding that federal program with state taxpayer dollars.