Never Forget Why the Affordable Care Act is so Important
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act–more than 105 million Americans will continue to benefit from the elimination of lifetime limits and the coverage of preventive services, more than 6 million young adults will remain covered by their parents’ health care plans and seniors will continue to save money on prescription drugs: http://www.aflcio.org/Issues/Health-Care
Stand Up For Florida’s Children
You may have heard about Gov. Rick Scott’s plan to increase public education funding by $1 billion. Suspicious yet? You should be, because Scott is getting this “new” funding by cutting Florida’s Medicaid program, which coincidentally provides essential health care to hundreds of thousands of children in our state. And in case you forgot, Scott had proposed a whopping $3 billion cut to public schools last year, and the Legislature gave him a giant $1.3 billion. Scott’s “increase” even if it made it into the state’s budget, wouldn’t replace all the funding he and his buddies in the Legislature cut out last year.
There’s a better, fairer way to balance Florida’s budget that protects our children from schemes like Scott’s: making wealthy corporations pay their fair share.
The Real State of The State
The Florida Center For Fiscal and Economic policy released a blockbuster report yesterday showing Florida at or near bottom in education, health, and tax fairness rankings in comparison with other states.
You can read the full report here (pdf.) Some rankings that stood out to us:
- 3rd highest unemployment rate.
- 49th among the states in the percentage of unemployed who receive benefits
- 3rd-worst in the percentage of children under 18 without health insurance
- 46th in per capita income growth.
- 2nd most regressive (unfair) tax system.
- 47th in per capita state and local government expenditures for all education.
Florida has had a state government that has consistently not made our middle class a priority, and these rankings show the results of those efforts. This is a primary reason why were Fighting For Florida.
