The Badger Awakens, Part 10

Gov. Scott Walker now has the power to cut millions from Wisconsin's Medicare program with no legislative action and no public hearings...meaning there's nothing to stop him from gutting it.

The major question: how the governor’s Department of Health Services will use that authority as it cuts a projected $466 million in costs from the programs over the next two years.

“We don’t know exactly what will be coming down the pike,” said Bob Jacobson, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Council on Children & Families. “And we don’t know how we can have a voice in those decisions when the Legislature has been taken out of the picture.” [...]

The budget-repair bill passed earlier this year gave the Department of Health Services the authority to make changes in the programs without legislative approval but required the department to hold public hearings.

The budget bill passed last week dropped the public hearing requirement. The exemption would remain in effect throughout the governor’s term.

This is how democracy works under Republican rule.  When Democrats are in charge of the government, oversight is needed to protect Americans from the evils of socialism, Kenyan colonialism, multi-culturalism, and a whole host of other "-isms" because democracy is all about checks and balances.

When Republicans are in charge, oversight must immediately be dismantled because GOP leaders need as much executive power as possible in order to dismantle what they were elected to protect because checks and balances are unnecessary government interference.

So yes, I fully expect Scott Walker to cut thousands from the BadgerCare rolls.  And then what?  I guess they'll go back to clogging up emergency rooms and costing Wisconsin taxpayers even more money.  That's the key to the Republican effort to "fix" America's poor:  to make them so miserable they simply decide to not be poor.