Injustice in Action: Hasty Passage of Bills that Affect the Most Vulnerable
Dr. Peter Bakken, Justice and Witness Coordinator
“…You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” – Leviticus 19:18, Mark 12:31
As Christians, we seek to follow Jesus’ way of equity and grace for all of God’s beloved children. Loving God, we care for neighbors not only through acts of service as individuals or churches, but also by working for public policies and programs that uphold the common good and help the most marginalized to flourish as full members of the community.
Public benefits programs like BadgerCare, FoodShare, and Unemployment Insurance bolster the common good and help the most vulnerable members of our communities. They support local economies and strengthen the workforce by assisting our struggling neighbors to meet their economic, nutritional, and health needs. They should be strengthened not weakened, but they are increasingly under attack in our state legislature. This can be evidenced by bills introduced recently.
Complicating BadgerCare
One bill of particular concern at the moment, Assembly Bill 148, relates to BadgerCare. Many of our low-income neighbors — including children, adults, seniors, and people with disabilities — rely on BadgerCare for their healthcare. This bill would throw more obstacles in the way of their ability to thrive. AB 148 requires people to reapply for BadgerCare every six months. It prohibits the Department of Health Services (DHS) from supplying partially filled out re-enrollment forms in order to make the process less burdensome. It would lock participants out of BadgerCare for six months if they fail to report changes that might affect their enrollment status.
More than doubling the paperwork people need fill out to stay on BadgerCare wastes money on unnecessary administrative red tape. It increases the chances someone will lose healthcare through a clerical error, because they missed or misunderstood a notification, or due to a temporary change in income. Cutting people off from coverage for a reporting failure, rather than imposing a fine (the penalty under current law), can be far more devastating for the individual. When someone loses coverage temporarily, it is not only dangerous for them, but also adds the administrative costs of disenrolling and reenrolling.
It is not only unjust to burden and threaten struggling individuals and families in this way, but it hurts ourselves. With good health, people are better able to support themselves and contribute to a thriving community and local economy as workers and as neighbors.
Unemployment Insurance
Some legislators are taking the results of the recent vague and misleading referendum on work search requirements for “welfare” recipients as a license for a fleet of bills making changes in Unemployment Insurance. Those changes would make it easier to deny benefits to people who have lost their jobs at a time when unemployment claims are at an all-time low. There isn’t room here for a fuller discussion of these bills (if you want to do a deeper dive, see this news story), but note how Wisconsin Statute § 108.1 states the purpose of Unemployment Insurance as both protecting the well-being of those in need and supporting the wellbeing of the larger community:
The burdens resulting from irregular employment and reduced annual earnings fall directly on the unemployed worker and their family. The decreased and irregular purchasing power of wage earners in turn vitally affects the livelihood of farmers, merchants and manufacturers, results in a decreased demand for their products, and thus tends partially to paralyze the economic life of the entire state. In good times and in bad times unemployment is a heavy social cost, directly affecting many thousands of wage earners.
Again, we have the opportunity to re-learn the wisdom of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s statement: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Undermining Democracy
These bills were circulated for co-sponsorship the day after the passage of the referendum and introduced in the Assembly that Friday. Three separate public hearings on the different but related bills were held the following Wednesday (two of them at the same time). The Four committees responsible will be meeting this Tuesday and Wednesday to vote on whether to forward AB 148 and all the Unemployment Insurance bills for a vote in the full Assembly. That vote might happen in the next week or two.
The speed at which these bills are being pushed through the legislative process also undermines democracy, for it gives citizens – especially those most directly affected — little time to understand the bills’ implications and voice objections. You, however, have the chance to contact your legislator about AB 148 through the WCC Advocacy page. Do it today!
