State legislators refused $125 million in federal stimulus funds aimed at expanding unemployment benefits in April.
The decision represented a major lost opportunity for the local chapter of the Virginia Interfaith Center on Public Policy, which held a forum Sunday to explain the need for expanded unemployment insurance for poor families and children.
The center - a non-partisan, non-profit organization made up of a broad coalition of faiths - advocates social justice issues such as increased access to health care for poverty-stricken Virginians.
"We look across all the world's faiths. They all stand for treating the least among us fairly and humanely," said Stephanie Gilmore, chairperson of the New River Valley chapter. "We're trying to get people to care about equity and justice for poor people," Gilmore said.
The Virginia Senate voted to accept the funds, but the House of Delegates jettisoned the idea when the General Assembly convened for last month's special veto session.
"I cannot tell you how shocked and distressed we are (about) that action on the part of the House of Delegates. How they could have turned their backs on the working poor in this state at a time like this is just unconscionable," Gilmore said.
Delegates Crockett-Stark, Nutter, and Shuler and Sens. Edwards and Smith were invited to discuss their positions at the forum. None attended.
"The legislators who voted against it are saying, we would have taken that money and expanded the unemployment benefits and then that would have been permanent and it would have bankrupted the state ... (that is) not true," Gilmore said. "There are things the legislators are saying ... and in each case, there's a rebuttal."
"As the economy worsens, more families are going into poverty. More children are going into poverty. And the effects on children are just disastrous," Gilmore said. "One of the things that can soften the blow on children is continuing access to health care."
The Commonwealth Institute, a sister organization that conducts fiscal analyses to provide data that supplements the Interfaith Center's agenda, had several facts on hand.
"The legislature said that these would have to be permanent changes, and the money was temporary, which really was not actually the case," said John McInerny, health policy director at the Commonwealth Institute during his keynote address at the forum. "The legislature could remove these provisions whenever they wanted to, and also the money should have been enough to last for at least a decade."
"We feel that hopefully the General Assembly will seek to access that money to really help people in absolute need," McInerny said. The state has until 2010 to access those particular stimulus funds.
Adapting a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities federal study for Virginia, the Commonwealth Institute concluded that 50,000 more children would sink into poverty if unemployment reached 8 percent. That number has already been reached on the national level.
"If we went to 9 percent, which unfortunately it looks like it's heading in that direction, the increase would be between 53,000 and 63,000 additional kids falling into poverty," McInerny added.
Despite being one of the most well-off states in the United States, Virginia falls far behind in terms of unemployment benefits. Only 26 percent of laid off workers are able to access benefits, and just 52,000 out of a total of 125,000 children living in deep poverty currently receive assistance.
This discrepancy becomes apparent in state expenditures and coverage on health care programs such as Medicaid or SCHIP, or FAMIS, a Virginian program that covers uninsured children who otherwise are not eligible for Medicaid benefits.
"While everyone says they're for kids, actions sometime speak otherwise ... you're not going to find any type of a leader who is going to say that they're not interested in helping children," McInerny said, "but the data shows that ... our safety net in Virginia is not doing enough to help these kids, or anyone, in poverty."
The struggle for covering uninsured children in Virginia has had plenty of ups and downs over the years, according to Rhonda Seltz, manager of Radford University's FAMIS Outreach Project. "From a historical perspective, Virginia was one of the worst states as far as enrollments," Seltz said.
From 2002 to 2006, a four-year initiative supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to increase enrollment, simplify and coordinate between SCHIP and Medicaid dramatically improved privately uninsured citizens' health care.
The election of former Gov. Warner closely coincided with the launch of the commission. "The stars finally aligned because at that time Gov. Warner ... campaigned on the fact that 'I'm going to make sure that I get every child enrolled',"' Seltz said.
"I can't emphasize enough the importance of that political support," Seltz said. "We were recognized as one of the best programs in addressing all three of those goals. It was the coolest thing because you could see and actually be a part of improving access to care."
The initiative ended on June 30, 2006. On July 1, President Bush signed a federal budget deficit reduction act requiring photo identification and original birth certificates to gain access to SCHIP and Medicaid.
"With a stroke of a pen (he) destroyed everything we had done in four years. So that's when enrollment just went downhill," Seltz said. "Our outreach program was without funding for about a year and half."