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Dave Zweifel's Plain Talk: BadgerCare hullabaloo shows priorities are skewed
Two governmental budget "crises" have been playing out before our eyes these past several weeks and, embarrassingly, they say tons about our priorities.
The big one, of course, was in Washington, where the country's political leaders were feverishly finding a way to rescue Wall Street from its multibillion-dollar misdeeds lest more banks and financial institutions go belly up.
The other, not quite as loud, occurred right here in Wisconsin when it was discovered that the state will be paying about $16 million more for BadgerCare Plus than originally predicted.
Members of the same political party that came up with the original $700 billion plan, in order to save Wall Street and the corporate financial giants from themselves, reacted with horror that help for poor kids and their families is costing more than budgeted.
Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, a West Salem Republican, and Sen. Rob Cowles, R-Green Bay, separately called for a legislative audit.
"Either legislators were misled or staff made a tremendous error when they analyzed the effect of this approach," Huebsch complained in a letter to Health Services Secretary Karen Timberlake.
"It's troubling because this was supposed to cost nothing," said Rep. Leah Vukmir, a Wauwatosa Republican, who chairs the Assembly's Health Committee.
Others chimed in that the state Department of Health Services, the entity that administers BadgerCare, needs to get a handle on costs.
While all this hand-wringing was going on because more poor kids than expected are getting at least some limited health care, Congress was fashioning ways to best to figure out how it could pump hundreds of billions -- billions, not millions -- into the financial markets to save some of the country's most wealthy people from supposed economic disaster.
The Bush administration, which came up with the original plan, insisted that unless there was a "rescue," many average Americans would be hurt, implying that even our pensions and 401(k)s could be in jeopardy if we didn't help the titans of Wall Street get through this crisis.
What's particularly galling to many Americans is that there never is any money for programs that could alleviate some of the suffering and inequity in our society. Our inner city schools are rotting (Wisconsin's largest city, Milwaukee, is contemplating dissolving its school district); more than 45 million people are without health care coverage; bridges are collapsing on the Interstate system, but we're constantly told we don't have the money to fix things. President Bush last year even vetoed an increase in support for the SCHIPS program, which helps states pay for poor kids' health care.
Yet, when it comes to paying the costs of invading a foreign country or bailing out millionaire barons who have messed up playing fast and loose with other folks' bank accounts, somehow the money can be miraculously found.
Perhaps there was no other choice on this bailout, but those in Congress who fought to require protections for the taxpayers and insist that the money be returned someday were at least doing one thing right.
It's unconscionable that the country's economy -- an economy that both George W. Bush and John McCain called sound just a few weeks ago -- could have been placed in danger by an out-of-control financial industry that still feels it needs to answer to no one, not even as they come running to the taxpayers to save them.
Our political leaders never have a problem asking tough questions of those who administer funds for the poor and weak. We witnessed that recently as Gov. Jim Doyle's administration was lambasted for the drastic "mistake" of underestimating how many poor families were eligible and would use BadgerCare. That $16 million overrun for the BadgerCare kids will be political fodder for weeks and months to come. You can count on it.
But, just for once, wouldn't it be nice if the feet of the real plunderers of our tax dollars were held to the fire?
Some of them, after all, ought to be in jail.
Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times.
