Oh, by all means let's see what the Trump voters are thinking today
by digby
Eastern Kentucky has long received aid via the Appalachian Regional Commission, which dispenses grants for everything from job training to trail building. Money has also been available through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Economic Development Program, which funds local utilities; the Abandoned Mine Lands program, a fund supplied by payments from coal companies; and the Economic Development Administration, which has focused on helping communities left behind by coal.
The budget proposal Trump submitted last spring would have eliminated all of those programs. The area's congressional representatives — including Kentucky's senior senator, Mitch McConnell — protested the cuts, which local economic development professionals say would devastate the area.
The programs have been funded in the stopgap budget measures Congress has passed so far. But some local activists think the threat might lead to a needed shakeup among the federal agencies that have failed to turn around the area's economic prospects, despite millions of dollars and decades of work.
"They have become very habitual in how they fund things," says Chuck Caudill, a former local newspaper editor who is planning a run for Lee County judge. "I think that that will inject in the ARC the desire and the need to be more innovative."A boarded up store along Main Street in Beattyville.
Another threat on the horizon: Trump and congressional Republicans are targeting welfare. That jeopardizes the benefits that many people in this town rely on, including cash assistance, disability payments and food stamps, which more than a third of households in Lee County receive.
Then there's health care. Kentucky expanded Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act under its previous Democratic governor, and the uninsured rate dropped from 14.3% in 2013 to 5.1% in 2016, the ninth lowest rate in the country.
More than half of Lee County's residents are covered by Medicaid. Kentucky's current Republican governor says it's too expensive and has requested a federal waiver that would cut an estimated 96,000 people from the rolls, according to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.
The article explains that a lot of people who are getting benefits are also working it's just that their jobs don't pay wages high enough to support their families so they qualify for Medicaid and food stamps. But many of the locals don't see it that way:
None of that has been felt yet in Beattyville, however. And some of those who are just above the threshold for public assistance say they wouldn't necessarily object to seeing it go away.
Leighandra Shouse doesn't qualify for Medicaid and hasn't been able to afford insurance through her husband's job or on the Obamacare exchange. She's visited the local health clinic a few times for pain in her leg, since they charge on a sliding scale, but says she isn't getting the specialist treatment that might solve the problem.
"The people that are the ones that's working, we're the needy ones," says Shouse. "Are those people that's being handed everything free, are they going to go out and fill out an application for a job?"