Jump to full article: Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger, 2008-07-13
Intro: At the same time, it is equally disingenuous for Gov. Barbour to rail against the Legislature for failing to solve the Medicaid shortfall while throwing all his considerable political weight around to stop lawmakers from raising the state's cigarette tax as part of a solution for Medicaid or other fiscal woes.
Barbour has protected the tobacco industry from higher taxes like a mama bear protects her cubs. Of late, the governor is making noise about "not opposing" a cigarette tax hike in 2009 but wants to tie it to cuts in income taxes.
Predictably, House members are angry over first being kept from using a cigarette tax as a tool in the toolbox to solve the Medicaid problem and angrier still at being told that a cigarette tax hike must somehow be swapped for a likely income tax cut - even at a time when the state is $17 million behind and counting on their revenue estimates in the midst of an uncertain economy.
The partisan political enmity between Barbour and House Democrats has reached a boiling point. While we understand the forces on both sides that brought the heat, it's clear that the people who are about to get burned are the blind, the elderly, the disabled, children and others among the one-in-four Mississippians who depend on Medicaid for their health care.
Cutting Medicaid in a state as poor as Mississippi is morally wrong - and will wreak economic havoc during a recession.
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