Walker's Family Care Falsities

On Monday, Scott Walker, as is his wont, did his usual showboating when he finally signed the Family Care bill, lifting the caps as he was ordered to do by the federal government three months ago.

But even though the federal order is common knowledge, Walker still couldn't resist trying to lie about it:

Walker signed several bills at Independence First in Milwaukee, including lifting the enrollment cap on the long-term care program for the elderly and disabled.

Walker announced plans in December to allocate $72 million to resume enrolling people in Family Care, following an order from the federal government. The legislation he signed on Monday lifted a cap on enrollment.

Flanked by dozens of people with disabilities, Walker praised Family Care.

"It's a great program to help people in need," he said to reporters afterward.

Walker said he was following through on a promise he made last summer to lift the enrollment caps and provide funding.

He said changes were made to make the program sustainable, which he said opened the door to expanding it to other counties. Family Care is now available in 57 of the state's 72 counties.

He later doubled down on the lie with this tweet, claiming he said that it would end before the end of the year:

The truth is that the budget he signed into law said that the cap would be for at least two years, the entire length of the budget.

But even though this is supposed to be a good thing - a correction of a past misdeed done by Walker and the Republicans in the state legislature - it still contains some serious flaws. In other words, they couldn't even implement the correction correctly.

Just getting the bill to the legislature was a challenge that was almost thwarted by Representative Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield) who wanted to add a ten-year residency requirement, which was in complete violation of Medicaid standards, which is six months. The introduction and subsequent withdrawal of this amendment knocked the vote out of the original date.

The law has one major flaw in that any expansion still has to go through the Joint Finance Committee, which is still co-chaired by Representative Robin Vos (R-Trollville), who has repeatedly and explicitly expressed his opposition to Family Care (or anything else that helps people).

But the most sinister aspect of this would-be good deed is that he is looking into cutting into vital health care services for other people, or even the same people that would benefit from the lifting of the cap. Of course, it would be unfathomable for Walker to have his filthy rich profiteering friends, cronies and campaign contributors share in the sacrifice. Just the thought of it would be labeled heresy in Fitzwalkerstan!

How sad of a little man Walker is that he cannot even right a wrong he committed without lying about it, making a fiasco of it and finding a way of actually making it worse.