Help Plug an $850 million HOLE in the PA Budget
Help Plug an $850 million HOLE in the PA Budget
Friends,
Below is a link and background information for people and individuals to sign that would encourage Senators Specter and Casey to support the FMAP extension. Thanks for your time.
Bill
Together, we can and do make a difference.
W.D. Chrisner III, LPC/CRC/r
PAIR Team Leader
Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania
1315 Walnut Street 5th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-238-8070 ext. 224
215-772-3126 (fax)
www.drnpa.org
Join the Disability Rights Network e-mail list for news and alerts at --
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From: Cathleen Palm [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2010 10:20 AM
Subject: RE: Help Plug the Hole in the Pennsylvania Budget
Help plug an $850 million HOLE in the PA Budget by clicking here.
Add your individual/organization's name on a letter to Senators Casey and Specter to assure that there is a 6-month extension of the Federal Enhanced Medicaid match rate (FMAP) to help fend off deep cuts to health and human services!
Act now. Senators Casey and Specter need to hear from YOU ASAP.
The U.S. House of Representatives left D.C. for the Memorial Day break without providing a temporary (6-month) extension of the enhanced federal Medicaid match rate (FMAP).
If the FMAP provisions are not reinserted into HR 4213 by the U.S. Senate, the PA budget moves from very challenging to crisis because FMAP was expected to infuse nearly $850 million (or 7.5% of DPW's total spending) into the state budget set to be negotiated in Harrisburg by the end of June.
Senators Casey and Specter have been strong on trying to finalize the FMAP extension BUT there is great and mounting pressure in D.C. on so many fronts.
It is critical that the U.S. Senate get FMAP back into a jobs/tax extender bill to send a STRONG signal to the U.S. House that it is non-negotiable - FMAP must be assured in the final bill!
Let's assure Senators Casey and Specter we appreciate their efforts, have their back and need their intervention to protect children and families!
Do your part to help plug an $850 million HOLE in the PA Budget by clicking here.
BACKGROUND: The enhanced FMAP was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and has been crucial to PA's budget so that deeper cuts to health and human services could be avoided at a time that demand was way up for such services. The ARRA FMAP provision is set to expire in December - midway through the state fiscal year. Congress has sent consistent and strong messages to states that they believe that continued high unemployment and too little economic rebound on Main Street is justification to provide states with a temporary extension of enhanced FMAP. Despite lots of signals and promises, Congress has not got the job done setting the stage for budget uncertainty (and anxiety) in the states.
Last week, prior to final passage of H.R. 4213 (American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010) in the U.S. House the FMAP provisions were stripped from the bill. This despite the fact that nearly all of the House Democrats from PA signed a May 7th letter urging their leadership to get the job done on FMAP. So there has been lots of talk and words but nothing to assure PA budget negotiators that the money will be in the bank when they negotiate a final budget.
On Tuesday, the Rendell Administration released the latest string of BAD news about state revenue collections (the $ PA uses to pay its bills, to build a budget around). To date revenue collections are $1.2 billion (nearly 5%) below expectation. Without FMAP that deficit would exceed $2 billion. Even if lawmakers are (and they should be) courageous to move on some raising some new/being creative on the revenue front, the HOLES are still too big to be filled without deep deep cuts that cut across all sectors (i.e. education, health, human services, economic development, safety and victim services, etc)!
So do your part to help plug an $850 million HOLE in the PA Budget by clicking here.