(The Center Square) – At or on top of the list of complaints from Democrats on the budget reconciliation bill signed into law on Friday were slashes to government programs, namely Medicaid and SNAP.
First-term Democratic Gov. Josh Stein estimated 500,000 North Carolinians would lose health care coverage and 1.4 million, including 600,000 children, “could find themselves without the help they need to afford food.”
SNAP is the acronym for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known also as food stamps.
“The General Assembly must step up to protect our bipartisan Medicaid expansion law and food assistance through SNAP,” Stein said. “This will require taking a hard look at our laws, our state budget, and our long-term revenue requirements. Even as those in Washington have left North Carolinians behind, I stand ready to do whatever I can to protect people’s health care and job and keep children fed and healthy.”
Republican U.S. Rep. Dr. Greg Murphy, the day before he and his colleagues agreed to the Senate’s changes, offered a different look.
He said, “We wouldn’t be in this damn mess with Medicaid if Democrats had not pushed the Great Society programs which destroyed the nuclear family and now 52% of the births in North Carolina are born to mothers on Medicaid.”
Countering from the other side, Rep. Alma Adams, D-N.C., said, “Republicans in Congress need to face the fact people that will suffer from this bill. Single mothers who can’t afford to see a doctor. Children who are going to bed hungry. Rural communities whose hospitals will close. Veterans who served our country, but we won’t support. These are the people this bill betrays.”
Great Society programs is a reference to the 36th president, Lyndon Johnson, successor to John F. Kennedy following the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination. A key initiative of Johnson, fourth Democrat to be president of the five between the quarter-century elections of 1932 and 1968, was the “war on poverty” and aligned legislation in health care, urban renewal, education and environmental conservation.
In the latest numbers available on the state Department of Health and Human Services website, North Carolina in 2023 had 120,065 births – with 58,939 (49.1%) charted non-Medicaid.
Within those not financed by Medicaid, 68.7% were white, 11% Black, 10.8% Hispanic and nearly 1% in other defined categories. For those financed by Medicaid, 38.9% were white, 35% Black, 17.3% Hispanic, and nearly nine-tenths of 1% in other defined categories.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service’s latest available numbers, the state had more than 1.5 million SNAP participants in fiscal year 2022. That included 648,229 children under age 18. Average benefits each month into the state were $225.22 million. The state has more than 9,100 retailers accepting SNAP benefits.
