By Antonio D. French
Filed Friday, March 17 at 5:50 AM
State Democratic legislators were unsuccessful in their fight to increase funding to Medicaid yesterday. They had proposed putting even more money, in addition to some earlier gains, into the program, which aids the state's poor and elderly, by slashing spending on computers and some farm programs.
"Don't choose megabytes over moms and programs over people," said State Rep. Yaphett El-Amin.
The Associated Press reports that the proposed $21 billion budget restores some benefits, such as eyeglasses and wheelchair batteries, eliminated in last year's cuts to the Medicaid health care program for the poor.
It resumes funding for programs axed because of budget woes in years past, such as the lunch subsidies for school-age Special Olympics participants dropped in 2003.
And it spends money on things never-before funded by the state, such as the $483,000 to aid the boll weevil eradication effort paid for thus far by cotton farmers and the federal government.
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