Governor’s Learning Curve for the Elderly

Gov. Pete Wilson has just pulled off one of the slickest moves seen in the Capitol since, well, since Willie Brown was here last year. The governor maneuvered Democrats into a corner on their own issue: education. People have watched and marveled and applauded, if grudgingly.

He has earned the accolades.

But there also has been another move that has attracted little notice, probably because it’s the sort of thing that makes people feel uncomfortable to watch. Maybe even embarrassed. It has been less slick than sad. Many would say shoddy.

While Wilson has been helping elementary school kids by pushing Democrats into class size reductions--Demos wanted to go slowly--the governor also has been walking all over the elderly poor, blind and disabled. His fellow Republicans have been right with him and so have some--not all--Democrats.

This has gotten to be a habit, formed by the need in the early 1990s to scrap for every dollar to balance state budgets bludgeoned by the recession. Everybody needed to sacrifice, state politicians decreed. Fair enough.

But now California is recovering and the state treasury is awash in money. The tax windfall partially is being used for class size reduction, but not all the money legally must be spent on schools.

Yet Wilson and the Legislature keep pelting the aged and disabled, a habit hard to break. It’s just too easy to continually take money from a group that contributes little to political campaigns.

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This is SSI/SSP we’re talking about--federal Supplemental Security Income and the State Supplementary Program. Both are administered as one package by the Social Security Administration, but the state has some say over benefits.

More than 1 million Californians get monthly SSI/SSP checks, nearly two-thirds of them disabled and about one-third elderly. Roughly 2% are blind.

Checks for the aged and disabled currently are $626--third highest in the nation, Wilson quickly points out, exceeded only by Alaska and Connecticut. But California is a high-cost-of-living state, his critics note, and the purchasing power of these benefits has declined by 25% since 1990.

For the aged and disabled on SSI/SSP, $626 is all they get--no additional social security, although they also receive Medi-Cal health care benefits. The blind get an added $55.

To be eligible for aged benefits, you can have only $2,000 in total resources, except for a personal residence. To qualify as disabled, you basically must be physically or mentally incapable of holding a job.

In other words, these are the people most dependent on government. They aren’t the able-bodied who refuse to get a job, not the teen girls who irresponsibly get pregnant. But they fit conveniently into the category of “welfare recipient,” so they can be squeezed by politicians.

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In the $63-billion budget proposal now being negotiated by Wilson and legislative leaders, these aged, blind and disabled are squeezed by another $400 million. This is how, by:

* Making permanent a “temporary” $37 monthly benefit cut that was supposed to have expired last Monday.

* Cutting another $30 from urban residents and $60 from rural recipients. This also was approved last year, but didn’t take effect because it required congressional legislation. That’s anticipated this summer with federal “welfare reform.”

Until Wednesday night, it also was planned to confiscate $12.25 the feds intended as a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). This was designed to replace another $20 gouge proposed by Wilson but rejected by lawmakers.

The COLA theft would have pocketed the state $75 million and paid for the first-year installment on a business tax cut.

But Assembly Democrats became so incensed they threatened to block the budget. “I’ll do everything I can short of shooting people to make sure this rip-off is rectified,” vowed veteran Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco), author of the original SSP act in 1973.

In the end, Wilson and Republicans backed down and agreed to allow the old folks and disabled their token COLA.

Jane Small of Westwood, chairwoman of the L.A. County Commission on Disabilities, says “all the terrible things you read about eating dog food, they’re true for people who don’t have a support system of family and friends. This is a disgrace.”

When a recipient learns of benefit cuts, she says, “It’s like, ‘How much more can happen to me? How much more worthless can they consider me if they want to take away my $12?’ It’s a terrible blow to dignity.”

Saving them their $12 was a nice little victory for Democrats after having been outfoxed by Wilson on education.