Fixed income seniors getting shafted on all sides

Fixed income seniors

Fixed income seniors are going to have a very hard time “under revised health and social service cuts proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger,” according to the Sacramento Bee. “Schwarzenegger has proposed cutting $3.4 billion from health and social service programs, from a projected budget of $33.2 billion to $29.8 billion.”

Amongst the cuts will be government-sponsored health insurance and the state in-home care program.

Here are a few excerpts from the Sacramento Bee article:

Under the Schwarzenegger plan, “an estimated 84,000 seniors would lose help with daily chores like laundry, cleaning and bathing. Seniors and the blind and disabled would not receive a cost-of-living increase in their Social Security checks despite rising gas and food prices.”

Poor adults would lose basic dental and vision care. Health premiums for children of low-income families would increase by $3 or $4. Legal immigrants would be restricted to emergency health care.

Working poor families would receive 5 percent less in cash assistance. And the average amount given to care for a foster child would drop from $723 per month to $651 starting in October.

And all of this will happen as we suffer under the Bush recession and as home foreclosures continue to increase in California.

It will be even worse in Santa Ana, where the City Council, which is dominated by Democrats, raised the water rates last year, even though I discovered that Santa Ana spends a third of its water budget on administration, as compared to similar budgets that spend about 19% of their budgets on administration.

And fixed income seniors throughout Orange County will suffer because of two more Democrats, Santa Ana Councilman Sal Tinajero and La Habra Councilwoman Rose Espinoza. Those two combined last year to push through a 60% increase in sanitation fees over the next five years.

But that’s not all! The Democratic Party of Orange County (DPOC) in combination with Santa Ana Mayor MIguel Pulido and his City Clowncil are backing another tax increase in the form of the fraudulent SAUSD Measure G, which is a bond measure.

I thought that the Democrats were supposed to be the party that helps the poor? Between Schwarzenegger in Sacramento and the Clowncil in Santa Ana, not to mention the rest of the DPOC, local fixed income seniors and other working poor have no hope. And it will get worse before it gets better.


About Admin

"Admin" is just editors Vern Nelson, Greg Diamond, or Ryan Cantor sharing something that they mostly didn't write themselves, but think you should see. Before December 2010, "Admin" may have been former blog owner Art Pedroza.