Legislature urged to retain Medicaid> Infirm provide visual statement of need

AUGUSTA — Her frail body wracked and withered by the degenerative signature of multiple sclerosis, Linda Bosworth was rolled into a legislative hearing room on a hospital gurney Monday to make the visual statement her words could not express.

The South China woman was accompanied by her husband, Leroy, who spoke for hundreds of disabled Maine residents facing a loss of benefits under a proposed welfare reform bill.

“We are opposed to any bills that would eliminate Medicaid programs for personal care attendants and other programs that we need to survive daily,” he said. “I am a personal care attendant, and so for us this program provides a double benefit: It provides care that Linda needs and also keeps me employed. Without the program, I would be out of a job and Linda, probably in a nursing home. I don’t know.”

Women who survived on welfare benefits and went on to obtain college degrees and good-paying jobs spoke their minds to the panel. Others, whose prospects were less promising, asked for little more than the continuation of the cash benefits that sustain them.

For the rest of this week, the Legislature’s Human Resources Committee will analyze nearly a dozen bills aimed at achieving welfare reform and recommend one or more that reflect the consensus of the 13-member committee.

There are two strong comprehensive reform packages proposed by Democrats: a cost-cutting bill submitted by Republicans aimed at reducing welfare caseloads, and a proposal from Gov. Angus S. King that would seek to make welfare recipients more self-supporting by decreasing the amount of time they actually spend on assistance.

More than 100 spectators and participants jammed the State Office Building hearing room, many in wheelchairs.

The disabled spectators were united in their opposition to a bill sponsored by Rep. Walter Whitcomb, R-Waldo, that would require the Department of Human Services to reduce its functions to correspond to federally mandated programs in place as of July 1, 1996.

Whitcomb said Maine is far too generous in exercising its prerogative to appropriate state funds for federally matched subsidies.

“The department can come in and talk about losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal draw-down money and often, in terms of a 2-1 match, what would happen if we don’t provide those benefits,” he said. “But at some point we have to say enough is enough.”

Some of the targeted benefits fund a University of Maine support services program known as Onward, which allows low-income Maine residents to attend college.

Charlotte C. Herbold, an assistant professor of English who teaches under the program, said that Onward counts among its ranks several women receiving benefits under Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Many have gone on to obtain successful careers in education and social services, among other fields.

Herbold warned that reducing the funds allowing Onward students access to a college degree would only further erode their overall ability to become productive, tax-paying citizens.

“If the Maine legislators choose not to support them in their struggle to overcome adversity and become independent, they and their children will probably become what, sadly, so many Mainers and other Americans have lately become: victims of a dysfunctional society in which equal opportunity does not exist,” she said.

The university professor supported a plan backed by Rep. Sharon A. Treat, D-Gardiner, that seeks an increase in the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5 an hour.

Treat said that with medical insurance costs taken under consideration, it is easy to see how mothers would turn to a state-funded program to provide essential services that their minimum-wage paychecks can’t provide.

“The majority of AFDC recipients, who are primarily single parents, leave welfare within two years — and they leave to go to work,” she said. “However, once in the work force, many cycle back to welfare — two-thirds within five years.”

Treat said that boosting the minimum wage would reduce proportionately the amount of money available under an AFDC grant. Those savings, she said, could be funneled into welfare-to-work programs such as ASPIRE (an education and training program) that has thousands on its waiting list.

The committee will continue its process this week of sifting through the reform proposals to craft a piece of legislation that can pass the muster of Democrats, Republicans and an independent governor.

Sen. Joan Pendexter, R-Scarborough, is sponsoring the Republican restructuring plan that essentially dismantles the old AFDC program and extends oversight to the Department of Labor as well as to DHS.

Pendexter’s plan would deny additional AFDC cash benefits to mothers who have more children while on welfare. The bill also would require dependent children to attend school and render parents under age 18 ineligible for cash benefits.

Pendexter said welfare in the United States has boiled down to a “30-year experiment,” and that criticisms of welfare reform should not be perceived as “mean-spirited” or “unfair.”

“I think a lot of that just comes from the frustration of dealing with a system that doesn’t work,” she said. “It’s been 30 years of a system that doesn’t help children. Thirty years of a system that keeps women in poverty.”