MADISON – The day after more than one million signatures were submitted to recall Scott Walker, details are emerging that Walker’s administration claimed a budget deficit as justification to kick tens of thousands of Wisconsinites off of BadgerCare.
BadgerCare provides health coverage to about 20 percent of Wisconsin residents, ranging from low-income families with children to adults with severe disabilities and those living in nursing homes.
Federal law requires that states seeking a waiver to reduce or eliminate access to public health care certify that they have, or project to have, a budget deficit. In seeking a waiver that would restrict or eliminate health care for thousands of Wisconsin families, Scott Walker’s administration certified in a December 29, 2011 letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that, “Wisconsin would have a budget deficit, based on generally accepted accounting principles, during state fiscal years 2012 and 2013…”
The admission by Walker’s administration that Wisconsin carries a budget deficit contradicts Scott Walker’s perpetual campaign lie that his “reforms” are working for Wisconsin, and that he has eliminated “a $3.6 billion budget deficit without raising taxes.”
“The jig is up,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Wednesday. “Scott Walker is either lying to preserve his own political career, or he is lying to kick tens of thousands of Wisconsinites off of health care to pay for his $2 billion tax giveaway to wealthy special interests. One million strong Wisconsinites have already forced Scott Walker’s recall, but as news continues to emerge about the dishonest lengths Scott Walker will go to to finance his rent-to-own government, their ranks will surely grow.”
