Michigan Citizen Action
A progressive citizens lobby that champions the rights of all people.

Cuts Could Cost Michigan as Many as 50,650 Jobs and as Much as $5.7 Billion in State Business Activity

Washington, D.C.—The Medicaid cuts in the House Republican budget, if implemented today, would have a devastating impact on the struggling economy of Michigan. These cuts would put as many as 50,650 jobs and as much as $5.7 billion in state business activity at risk. That’s the conclusion of a report for Michigan released today by the national health care consumer organization Families USA.

Titled “Jobs at Risk,” the report focuses mainly on how Medicaid cuts would damage the state’s economy, although the report makes clear that the human toll of such cuts is far wider, affecting the health and well-being of low-income and middle-class families, children, seniors, and people with disabilities.

“Every federal Medicaid dollar that flows into a state stimulates state business activity and generates jobs,” Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA, said today. “Conversely—and tragically, for Michigan—cutting Medicaid funds not only hurts seniors, people with disabilities, and children who count on the program as their lifeline, but it also results in fewer jobs and stunts the economic recovery.”

The budget proposal adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives, sponsored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), calls for cuts in federal funding to current state Medicaid programs of 5 percent in 2013, 15 percent in 2014, and 33 percent in 2021.

View the Families USA “Jobs at Risk” report for Michigan and finish reading article below.

Read the rest of Proposed Medicaid Cuts Would Harm Michigan’s Economy

The budget passed by House Republicans in April 2011 makes radical changes to Medicare.  The Republican plan raises costs for seniors and individuals with disabilities enrolled in Medicare, reduces their benefits, and puts private insurance companies in charge of the program.  For current beneficiaries, important benefits – such as closing the hole in Medicare’s drug coverage – would be immediately eliminated.  For individuals age 54 and under, Medicare’s guarantee of comprehensive coverage would be replaced with a “voucher” or “premium support” to buy private health insurance.  By design, this federal contribution does not keep pace with medical costs, shifting thousands of dollars in costs onto the individual.

Interested in seeing how these cuts affect Michiganders? Check out this link and click on your representative under the “Michigan” header.

http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?q=page/district-by-district-impact-of-republican-medicare-plan-and-medicaid-cuts

Michigan Citizens’ Redistricting Competition Rules and Procedures

A project of the Michigan Center for Election Law, in partnership with the Michigan Redistricting Collaborative

The competition criteria will value plans that comply with federal and state laws, create competitive districts, enable fair representation, and preserve communities of interest. Winning plans will be selected based upon how well they meet eight objective traditional redistricting factors:

1. Contiguity: are all of the parts of your district connected?

2. Voting Rights Act Compliance: have you created the required number of majority African American districts? (2 per Congressional plan, 5 per State Senate plan, and 12 per State Legislative plan)

3. Equipopulation: Does each district have roughly the same number of people in it? (You can deviate up to 1% for Congressional districts, 5% for State legislative and Senate districts)

4. Preserve existing city and county boundaries: Do your districts avoid splitting counties and cities as much as possible?

5. Compactness: Is the shape of your districts as close to a circle or square as possible?

6. Competitiveness: Were you able to create districts where there is a balanced percentage (i.e., close to 50%/50%) of Republican and Democratic voters?

7. Partisan Representation: Did you create roughly the same number of majority Democratic and majority Republican districts?

8. Preserving Communities of Interest: Did you make an effort to keep some smaller communities (college campuses, language minority populations) together in one district to preserve their voting strength?

See the rest of the rules and procedures here.

The extremists on Capitol Hill are demanding billions and billions of cuts in social programs. Once again, they are asking the elderly, the disabled, and average Americans to take the hit, under the guise of “shared sacrifice”. And they are doing this AFTER holding middle class tax cuts hostage and demanding that the Bush Era tax cuts for the wealthiest amongst us be extended. It’s time to demand an end to tax cuts for the wealthiest amongst us, it’s time to demand an end to corporate loopholes. It’s time to demand that shared sacrifice include the wealthy as well.

Sign the petition here.

Yesterday, Progress Michigan joined MoveOn.org and Michigan Citizen Action in delivering over 16,000 petition signatures to Governor Rick Snyder demanding that he drop his immoral plan to increase taxes on working families to give huge tax breaks to big corporations and CEOs.

Governor Snyder heard from thousands of people across the state who are sick of right-wing attacks on middle-class families. Now it’s decision time for the state Legislature. Take a moment to tell your elected representatives that raising taxes on working families by gutting the Earned Income Tax Credit is wrong, and it’s bad for Michigan’s economy.

Doing away with the tax credit would push 14,000 Michigan children into poverty and raise taxes by $350 million on low-income families who work, in order to pay for a $1-billion tax cut to large corporations and CEOs.

Yet experts agree that the tax credit for working families strengthens local economies, helps businesses hire and retain productive workers, and helps Michigan build a more skilled workforce.

Punishing working families to fund a tax break for corporations is bad for Michigan and bad for our economic recovery. Tell your lawmakers to stop the attack on middle class Michiganders.

Congress is debating a budget proposal submitted by Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who proposes $2.2 trillion in spending cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and other health care services. Ryan describes his proposal as a “path to prosperity” for a country facing demographic changes and rising health care costs.

But the congressman’s “path to prosperity” would be a path only enjoyed by the wealthiest Americans, who would see their income tax rates fall under his proposal. For the rest of us, including the 47 million Americans who rely on Medicare and the nearly 60 million low-income seniors, children and families who will rely on Medicaid by the time the cuts take effect, Ryan’s approach is a road to ruin.

$2.2 trillion is an almost unfathomable sum. So let’s break it down. What does Ryan’s proposal mean for Michigan?

Medicare serves 1.6 million Michigan seniors Ryan wants to turn Medicare into a private insurance voucher program. He would force recipients to pay double and eventually triple what they now pay – eventually bankrupting many seniors. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Ryan proposal shows that by 2030 seniors will be left to pay almost 70 percent of their own health care costs, driving many seniors into bankruptcy.

Ryan’s budget also eliminates the tax credit for lower- and middle-income families Congress approved in order to help people pay for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. In the last few years thousands of small businesses owners and families have lost their health care coverage, due to skyrocketing costs.  These tax credits would have put health insurance back into reach for these businesses and families.  By cutting this tax credit, the Ryan budget will leave 877,000 more people in Michigan without health insurance by 2021, according to a report issued earlier this month by Families USA, a nonpartisan group that represents health care consumers. (And who pays when they end up in the emergency room? You and I.)

And what would the Ryan budget mean for states already reeling from financial distress? Michigan would lose $63 billion in federal funds and tax credits between the years of 2012 and 2021. This figure includes federal funds for Medicaid and Medicare, and health insurance premium tax credits for lower- and middle-income families in the Affordable Care Act.

And as dismal as this sounds, the outlook actually is worse. Ryan’s plan also would decimate the state’s economy. As the Families USA report notes, reduced federal funding into the states would cost states jobs and hurt state and local economies. This is because the federal contribution to a state’s Medicaid program is new money that flows into the state’s economy.

This money creates jobs and stimulates business activity. Indeed, the Economic Policy Institute has estimated that cuts to Medicaid alone would cost the country 2.1 million jobs over the next five years. Almost all of these jobs would be in the private sector, because that’s where most Medicaid benefits go.

At the end of the day, Ryan’s proposal would have a very real short-term and long-term impact. In the short term, he would threaten our still-fragile economy, lengthen our unemployment lines and withdraw sorely needed dollars at the state and local level. In the long term, he would place seniors and children at risk and ensure that America’s best days are forever behind us.

There are alternatives to Ryan’s budget, which gives $1.5 trillion in tax breaks to the rich and big corporations while rewarding the health insurance industry. Medicare and Medicaid could save money by negotiating prescription drugs prices, which would cut drug prices in half. They could pay hospitals to improve their communities’ health, instead of rewarding hospitals that provide the most expensive care. And, of course, we could make corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share.

The way out of our deficit problem is not to make average Americans poorer, and the rich richer – that’s a surrender, not a solution. The real solution is to pass a budget that creates jobs, educates our children, invests in our communities and provides for a secure, dignified retirement.

Join us in celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King’s last fight at the “We Are One” rally. Informational pdf here and information online here.

*** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ***

Monday, March 14, 2011

Contact: Leigh Fifelski, (517) 999-3646

Citizens, Groups: GOP Budget Endangers West Michigan Families, Future

Coalition of citizens send message statewide, urge rejection of budget

GRAND RAPIDS-KALAMAZOO – Citizens and groups from a range of backgrounds today delivered a message across the state, including in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, warning that Governor Rick Snyder’s proposed budget endangers Michigan’s families and their future.

“In this unfair budget, everyone sacrifices except Lansing politicians and big corporations,” said Erin Knott, Michigan Citizen Action. “West Michigan families and small businesses deserve a budget that puts them first and invests in our future. Instead, Lansing politicians are are exploiting Michigan’s budget crisis to attack seniors, workers’ rights and ordinary families in West Michigan, and that’s simply unfair.”

Snyder’s proposed budget is a vivid illustration of an unfair budget whose winners are large corporations and losers are ordinary Michigan families:

●     Tax breaks for large corporations, worth $1.7 billion

●     Tax increases on Michigan seniors, totaling more than $1 billion

●     Tax increases on low-income families, totaling more than $350 million in cuts to the Earned Income Tax Credit

●     Cuts to students and schools, amounting to more than $700 per pupil

●     Cuts to revenue sharing for already cash-strapped local communities, exceeding $100 million

Read the rest of Citizens, Groups: GOP Budget Endangers West Michigan Families, Future