The Welfare Rights Committee fought hard at the Capitol this year to undo the cuts and get back the poor people’s money that was stolen from us over the past few years.
For the first time in 20 years, politicians talked about increasing the monthly welfare grant because of the Welfare Rights Committee. In our “Fund Children’s Needs, Not Rich People’s Greed” Bill, we demanded that poor family’s welfare grants get a 10% raise!
We had some major VICTORIES in CHILDCARE, including:
Starting July 1st, 2006, more families will be able to get off the waiting list and into childcare! Over $10 million dollars was passed to get families into sliding fee childcare over the next 3 years.
-- Childcare providers will start to get better reimbursement rates, meaning we will have an easier time finding childcare and they won’t be passing the cost onto us!
We fought to get the co-pays for childcare reduced (this passed the Senate in our bill) and the Republicans REFUSED to decrease them, so we will have to fight on this again next year.
WRC STOPPED politicians who were trying to STEAL $23 million from the welfare money. They wanted to take poor people’s money and spend it on other things. Now we have that money to use for our fight next year.
Poor Families Tell Minnesota Politicians: TAX the RICH!
Poor families were a constant presence at the capitol. If we were not at the capitol, it would just be the rich talking to the rich. We forced them to deal with real people! Even on the very last day we were there with signs saying “Our Kids Can’t Eat Baseballs!” to speak out against stadiums for millionaires.
To undo the cuts, we have to change MN laws. The first step to change the law is to have a bill. WRC had a bill called the “Fund Children’s Needs, Not Rich People’s Greed” Bill. Our Bill passed through all the Senate committees and stayed strong until the very end of the session. Our bill takes money from the Rich and gives it back to the Poor. It closes tax loopholes for rich sham corporations and uses the money to undo welfare, health care and child care cuts.
We will keep fighting to undo these cuts NOW, next year & EVERY year until we get JUSTICE!
This is what our bill demanded:
--Undo the $125 MFIP SSI penalty
--Undo the $50 MFIP housing cut The $125 SSI penalty and the $50 cut are the biggest welfare cuts in MN history! These cuts steal millions of dollars a year from the poor!
--Undo MA co-pays Many people are not getting medical care because of the co-pays.
--Undo ALL the childcare cuts. We won some victories on childcare this year!
--Stop attacks on immigrants Republicans are using a “divide and conquer” tactic with their racist immigrant bashing. We pushed to get MORE rights for immigrants - it was a winning strategy to STOP Pawlenty’s attacks.
--Raise the grants Welfare grants have not had a cost of living increase since 1986 - that’s 20 years!