Statement of Hunger Action Network on Raising the State Welfare Grant

For More Info: Mark Dunlea, 518 434-7371 xt 1#

The Hunger Action Network of New York State praises the leadership of Governor Paterson, Assemblymember Keith Wright, Senators Liz Krueger, Montgomery and Squadron, and State Lawmakers in raising welfare benefits after 18 years in a difficult budget year.

We appreciate that the final budget will move up the start date for the welfare grant increase by six months to July 1, 2009. However, after 18 years of inaction, a dollar a day increase for a family of 3 is not enough. Unfortunately, lawmakers decided not to do the 30% increase the Governor had proposed all at once, and instead will continue to spread it over 3 years, despite the receive of a half billion dollars in extra federal welfare funds.

We support the elimination of the $80 million in cuts to SSI benefits.

We are disappointed that the vast majority of the $175 million of federal TANF dollars allocated in this year's budget for the "welfare grant increase" is actually going to pay for the counties' (and NYC) share of the cost in future years, rather than going to our state's most vulnerable residents.

Too many New Yorkers are denied the opportunity to obtain the basic necessities of life. The state denies them the support and dignity they are entitled to under our state constitution. The legal challenges to the inadequacy of the state welfare grant will undoubtedly continue.

We are grateful that $30 million has been included in this year's budget for various jobs programs for welfare participants. Finding a job that will pay them enough to support their families is the overwhelming priority for adult welfare participants.

Poverty diminishes hope and crushes the human spirit. The Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions speak for the dignity of people in poverty in God’s sight and assigns responsibility to the community to address and alleviate such inequities. Our sacred texts implore us to feed the hungry, care for widows and orphans, and relieve the suffering of the weak and vulnerable. Churches, synagogues, and mosques provide food, clothing, housing, health care, and job assistance to those in need. But our charitable contributions are no substitute for government action and economic justice.


Statewide consumer advocacy coalition

offers mixed reviews of health budget agreements



The 2009-2010 Health/Medicaid budget agreements represent a mixed bag when it comes to impact on Medicaid consumers and the health care safety-net upon which they rely, according to Medicaid Matters New York (MMNY), a statewide coalition of over 130 organizations representing the interests of Medicaid consumers.

“We are pleased that some important actions were included in this year’s budget, such as simplifying the processes for enrolling in and keeping public health insurance coverage, providing funding for the clinics in the community that care for New York’s uninsured individuals and families, and continuing some reforms to the way Medicaid reimburses for care in various settings,” said Lara Kassel, Coordinator of the coalition. “Hospital rate reform will continue this year, though it is a shame that primary care investments could not have gone further given they rely on that reform.”

“The Governor and the Legislature deserve credit for the reforms they were able to move forward, particularly given the dire state of our economy,” added Trilby de Jung, Senior Health Law Attorney of the Empire Justice Center, and member of the MMNY Steering Committee. “It is our job as consumer advocates, however, to hold them to the stated goal of this Administration – creating a ‘patient first’ health care delivery system – and urge that they go further in the future.”



MMNY sees the final 2009-2010 Health/Medicaid budget in terms of impact on consumers and the providers upon which they rely, and characterizes them as “achievements,” “set-backs,” and “items of concern”:



Achievements

Elimination of onerous requirements that stand in the way of enrolling in and keeping public health insurance coverage – the face-to-face interview, fingerprinting, and the asset test
Family Health Plus coverage for 19-20 year-olds who do not live with their parents
Securing Medicare Part D wraparound coverage in the Elderly Pharmaceutical Insurance Program
Eliminating the proposal to increase premiums in the Medicaid Buy-In program for working people with disabilities
Creating a limited Long Term Care Assessment Center demonstration project, which would consolidate and standardize the assessment and authorization process for home and personal care services, allowing the state to better manage Medicaid resources, including due process provisions and consumer oversight, ensuring that individuals receive the services they need to stay in the community
Major reforms to the way Medicaid reimburses hospitals to take effect in this calendar year


Set-backs

Special interest politics resulted in numerous “charity care” funding pools for hospitals, putting public and safety-net hospitals at a serious disadvantage
Imposing higher premiums in the Child Health Plus program
Requirement for county opt-in on future Family Health Plus expansion which jeopardizes the opportunity for adults across the state to access health coverage
Requiring limits on frequency, amount and duration of prescriptions in Medicaid, and the creation of a step-therapy approach for prior authorization
Elimination of the trend factor for home care providers, and imposing an assessment on home care provider revenues previously in effect in the 1990s


Items of concern

Investments in primary care do not go as far as had been originally proposed
Relying on savings attributable to aggressively pushing individuals eligible for Medicaid and Medicare into managed care

---------------
Gov. David A. Paterson and leaders of the Legislature outlined a 131.8 billion agreement which includes new taxes, financing from the federal stimulus, and reduced health care spending.

The following is an outline of how StateWide's legislative priorities were impacted in this agreement:


Fair Share Tax Reform - Calls for residents making more than $300,000 but less than $500,000 to pay an income tax rate of 7.85 percent. New Yorkers making more than $500,000 would pay a rate of 8.97 percent.

Better Bottle Bill - A nickel deposit would be required of bottled water, to go along with carbonated drinks. The state will get about $115 million of the unclaimed deposits.

Bulk Purchasing of Precription Drugs - Allows for the NYSDOH to negiotiate directly with prescription drug companies for lower costs through bulk purchasing rebates.

SSI - Eliminates cuts and restores a cost-of-living increase to the State's portion of Supplemental Social Security Income checks.

EPIC Wrap - Maintains the EPIC wrap around coverage for Part D.

MMCAP - Restores funding cut to 7 Part D/EPIC advocacy organizations through savings from Federal Stimulus.

Transportation Funding - Restores $921,000 in NYSOFA Budget for Area Agencies on Aging transportation operating expenses.

Home Care - Reduces Home Care funding from 189 million proposed in the 2009 Executive Budget to 68 million in the budget agreement. The largest cut resulted from eliminating the inflation trend factor for home care services.

ALP Beds - Enacts the conversion of 6,000 nursing home beds into 6,000 Assisted Living Program Beds (which the lack the protections of the NYS Assisted Living Act).

Kinship Caregivers Program - Reduces funding for programs supporting relatives caring for children by 50%.

Social Adult Day Centers - Restores funding for social adult day programs.

EISEP - Restores funding cuts and allocates additional funding for Expanded In-home Services for the Elderly Program.

--------------
From Governor Paterson

Fellow New Yorkers:

This week, your state legislators will vote on the 2009-2010 New York State budget. In doing so, they will be asked to put the welfare of our entire State above any individual group or special interest. They are being asked to do their part in confronting a historic challenge as New York continues to face the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression.

For the past 378 days, my number-one priority has been to fight for a responsible solution to this fiscal crisis. Ensuring the short and long-term fiscal integrity of this state is important for all New Yorkers and the only way we could mitigate the effects of this crisis on Main Street was to produce a budget that required shared sacrifice from everyone. This budget also reflects a core value of my administration, providing accountability to the taxpayers by providing real solutions to our fiscal problems, and not gimmicks and band-aids.

While we have had to reduce spending, we have made sure that critical programs and services that help all New Yorkers get the funding they need. New York received approximately $6 billion in federal aid to help us cope with this crisis, but it represented only a fraction of our budget gap. The actions we take this week will put New York on the right path towards recovery by closing a $17.7 billion budget gap – the largest in State history. This budget will strengthen our long-term finances, protecting the state’s economy for the next generation. And we will implement significant, recurring spending reductions.

Not only is this budget fiscally responsible, it will also enact a number of long-overdue reforms to make government more accountable to New York’s taxpayers. For years, taxpayers have financed a Medicaid program that was the most expensive in the nation, but did not provide New Yorkers with the health care they need. That is unacceptable. This budget takes shifts funding to the type of primary and preventive care that will save money and save lives.

For years, we have been trying to reform the Rockefeller Drug Laws, so that we can more effectively protect communities across the state from the scourge of drugs. In this budget, we finally succeeded. For years, governors have tried to close underutilized State prisons, so that taxpayers no longer have to subsidize half-empty facilities. In this budget, we finally succeeded. For years, taxpayers have financed an ineffective Empire Zone program. In this budget, we finally stripped it of its worst abuses. These reforms will help us make this program an effective tool for creating quality jobs in our communities. For years, we have been fighting to enact a Bigger Better Bottle Bill that would help us clean up our communities. In this budget, we finally succeeded. And for the first time in since 1990, the State will increase the basic welfare grant. In this economic crisis, many New Yorkers who never thought that they would need assistance from the government are finding that they do. It is absolutely essential that we provide economic assistance where it is needed

To understand why I strongly support this budget, it is important to know how we arrived at this point. Our national economy has been in recession for more than a year, and New York is at the epicenter of a global economic crisis. When I took office, our State’s budget gap was $5 billion. Over the course of the last year, that deficit increased at a staggering rate. In the last two months alone, the deficit has increased by $4.7 billion, from $13 billion to $17.7 billion.

From the day I took office, we have faced our budget problems honestly and directly. My first act in office was to propose across-the-board spending reductions for all State agencies. In July, as the economy began to deteriorate, I instituted further spending reductions and imposed a hiring freeze and strict cash controls to manage the flow of State spending. In July, I called the Legislature back to Albany for an extraordinary emergency economic session and achieved $1 billion of mid-year reductions. All told, we enacted $3 billion in spending cuts this past year, by far the largest mid-year reductions in the history of this State.

In most economic times, these actions alone would be monumental. But during these times, it was just the tip of the iceberg.

Last fall, as the economy crashed and the budget gap continued to grow, it became clear even greater sacrifice would have to be made. To encourage discussion and to spur action, I presented my Executive Budget a month early. After three months of negotiation, amid an economy that has continued to deteriorate, we have reached a budget that reflects the tone I have set over the last year: We have addressed our long-term problems head-on by making tough decisions.

Once this budget is passed, we will enact recurring spending reductions of $6.5 billion – twice as much as in any other budget in State history. As a result, the budget gaps we will be required to close in future years have been reduced by about 80 percent, from approximately $60 billion to $11 billion.

To do this, we had to make tough, fiscally responsible choices, including reducing health care spending by $2.3 billion (the largest such reduction in State history) and eliminating the $1.5 billion STAR rebate program. And while the federal stimulus funding will allow us to restore all year-to-year cuts in School Aid, we will have to hold education spending to last year’s levels.

It was only after my colleagues in the Legislature agreed to these deep and historic spending cuts that I decided to support an increase in the personal income tax on the wealthiest New Yorkers. This is a temporary increase, which only became necessary when the deficit grew by almost $5 billion in the three months since I presented my Executive Budget.

This is a historic time for New York. As I have toured the State in these last 13 months, I have heard directly from you about the hardship everyday New Yorkers are facing. Tens of thousands of you have lost your jobs. Employers have been forced to cut back on salaries, health benefits and retirement programs. You have already been forced to make the kinds of tough decisions that our State government is making this week. This budget puts New York on the path to a better future. We are changing the way state government spends money. And I am confident that when future generations look back at this time, they will see that the actions we take this week will mark a turning point.

Sincerely,

Governor David A. Paterson