Influence the Capitol from your Hometown

The Legislature has begun passing budget bills that intend to solve the state’s budget deficit with cuts alone. They are cuts that hit low wage workers, the unemployed and the disabled particularly hard. (Read a moving essay about just one of those cuts.) Be one of the voices that says Minnesota has other options to address its deficit without leaving more people homeless, more people without health care and more people without hope.

TOWN HALL MEETINGS – STARTING THIS WEEKEND
Our friends at the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless are keeping a calendar of town hall meetings across the state. These are meetings called by legislators who want to here from the people living in their districts. The citizens who take the time to attend these events can make a huge difference! Look up dates and places at http://www.mnhomelesscoalition.org/calendar/.

Go to those town hall meetings with information – click here for talking points.

INVEST IN MINNESOTA TRAININGS
Get a face-to-face briefing on Minnesota’s current budget situation and get tools and resources for taking action on making the case that new revenues are as necessary as budget cuts.

The next two local trainings:

• South Metro: Monday, April 4, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. at the Eagan Community Center, 1501 Central Parkway
• West Metro: Thursday, April 14, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. at the Bet Shalom Synagogue, 13613 Orchard Road in Minnetonka

RSVP to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

UPDATE
The Senate passed a Health and Human Services budget bill Wednesday evening that cuts $1.8 billion. It would:

• Virtually eliminate Minnesota Care for low wage working adults and give them instead a voucher to buy insurance in the private market. BUT Minnesota Care exists because there are not health insurance products that offer real coverage at rates low wage workers can afford.
• Cut assistance to families with disabled parents or children on the state’s welfare to work program. Families would have their poverty-level assistance cut by $150 a month for every disabled family member.
• End the state’s General Assistance program as well as emergency assistance for poor adults with disabilities or serious illness. In place of those state programs, the state would turn over the safety net for the state’s poorest adults to counties – with $20 million less in funding than the state invests now.
• Revive the “GAMC lite” program that served as a rickety bridge between the vetoed GAMC health program last year to Governor Dayton’s decision to move poor adults onto Medical Assistance. The Senate version would provide even less funding than last year’s program and two of the four hospitals willing to participate last year have already said they would not participate in this version.
• End state-funded food support and health care coverage for legal immigrants.
• For disabled and poor Minnesotans still on Medical Assistance, there would no longer be any help paying for prescription glasses, prosthetics, hearing aids or therapy needed to recovery from surgeries or devastating illnesses. Read a very well written essay on what that would mean.

Next week the House of Representatives is expected to act on the budget bill passed by its Health and Human Services Committee