Among the items on his chopping block is the General Assistance program, established in 1937, during the Great Depression. GA provides a maximum of $205 per month (less than 25 percent of the amount that defines poverty) to more than 68,000 Pennsylvanians. Recipients of this program are disabled adults, domestic-violence survivors, people caring for a sick or disabled person, those in drug and alcohol recovery, and children in the care of nonrelatives. More than 35,000 of those recipients live in Philadelphia.
Let's look first at the compassion quotient. That $205 may seem like little more than a restaurant meal for two or two football tickets for many of our elected officials in Harrisburg (and for many of the corporate leaders who stand to benefit from the hefty corporate-tax cuts in the same budget). But for those receiving GA, the most vulnerable people in our commonwealth, it is a meager lifeline - to keep a battered woman from returning to her abuser; to maintain a recovering addict in critically needed treatment so he can eventually return to the workforce; to prevent thousands of Pennsylvanians from falling into homelessness. The governor also plans to terminate tens of thousands of the very poorest people from Medicaid health insurance, which they rely on for their very lives.
And good luck if in their struggle to survive, the victims of the governor's cruel measure turn to churches, soup kitchens, shelters, or food pantries. Across the state, these charities are already overloaded and unable to meet the increasing need in the recession.
