Here's some great reporting from
TPM on a demonstration Tuesday on Capitol Hill by disabled activists, taking their message about the importance of Medicaid to the Super Congress.
The protest, organized by the disability group ADAPT, started in the Hart Senate Office Building and proceeded down Constitution Ave. to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The GOP proposal would reduce federal spending on Medicaid by $1.4 trillion from 2012 to 2021. Obama's plan would reduce federal Medicaid spending $66 billion.
Advocates picked the Hart building because that's where Sens. Jon Kyl and Pat Toomey, members of the Super Committee charged with bringing down the deficit, are based.
"We want them to reduce the cuts that they're making on Medicaid, because we have a lot of folks in our group and a lot of folks all across the country who depend on Medicaid for services and support so they can live in the community," David Wittie, who was leading the procession down Constitution Ave., told TPM.
The nearly 200 demonstrators were there to argue what Wittie and Ian Engle, in the video, expressed. Medicaid provides jobs, helps keep communities strong, and as Engle says in defending the home and community care based programs that are endangered, makes it so "folks like us can live in the community, maintain jobs, contribute to the community, pay taxes. It's not only morally irresponsible to house people in congregate facilities, it's fiscally irresponsible because it just costs more."
Not that Sens. Jon Kyl and Pat Toomey would be likely to hear that message, but the presence of these activists on the Hill will hopefully resonate with other policy-makers.
