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SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday proposed to extend health coverage to nearly all of California's 6.5 million uninsured people, promising to spread the cost among businesses, individuals, hospitals, doctors, insurers and government. The plan contains elements that are likely to provoke opposition from a wide range of powerful interests, including doctors, hospitals and insurers, as well as employers and unions. But it also contains incentives for each of them. All children, regardless of their immigration status, would be covered through an expansion of the state and federal Healthy Families program. "I don't think it is a question...

The U.S.- Mexico Social Security Totalization Agreement ...an agreement signed between the Bush administration and the Mexican government in 2004 that would funnel billions of U.S. Social Security funds to Mexican citizens. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has already warned that as a result of this agreement, the number of unauthorized Mexican workers and family members eligible for social benefits will likely increase. The Social Security Administration itself warns that Social Security is within decades of bankruptcy - yet they seem to have no problem making agreements that hasten its demise...

WASHINGTON -- As a result of lawsuits, the U.S. government released this week the actual U.S.-Mexico Social Security Totalization Agreement, an understanding signed between the Bush administration and the Mexican government in 2004 that would funnel billions of U.S. Social Security funds to Mexican citizens. TREA Senior Citizens League, a Washington-based nonpartisan seniors group, announced this week that after Freedom of Information Act lawsuits it filed against the government, it had received the secret agreement document. Brad Phillips, a spokesperson for TREA, told NewsMax that the language in the agreement "raises more questions than it answers — such as what...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- After numerous refusals over three and a half years, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has released the first known public copy of the U.S.-Mexico Social Security Totalization Agreement. The government was forced to make the disclosure in response to lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act by TREA Senior Citizens League, a 1.2 million-member nonpartisan seniors advocacy group. The Totalization Agreement could allow millions of illegal Mexican workers to draw billions of dollars from the U.S. Social Security Trust Fund. The agreement between the U.S. and Mexico was signed in June 2004, and is...

WASHINGTON, July 6 — The Bush administration said Thursday that it would exempt millions of the most vulnerable Medicaid recipients from a new law that requires them to prove they are United States citizens by showing birth certificates, passports or other documents. The action was apparently intended to pre-empt a ruling by a federal judge who is scheduled to hold a hearing on Friday on a lawsuit challenging the new requirement, which took effect on July 1. Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said that more than 8 million of the 55 million...

A rapist whose victims included "Top Gun" actress Kelly McGillis got taxpayer-funded Viagra for years, despite his fiendish history, it was revealed yesterday as he was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Serial sex predator Leroy Johnson was prescribed the erectile dysfunction pill by doctors at the Bronx-based Fordham-Tremont Community Mental Health Center from early 2003 to mid-2005, according to court records. The health center stopped doling out the little blue pills to Johnson only after new DNA tests linked him to a 1996 knife-point double rape - bringing his total number of rape victims to five. Center officials didn't...

Most Utahns feel a state law that allows undocumented students to pay in-state college tuition should be repealed, according to a new Salt Lake Tribune poll. Seventy-one percent of the 625 registered voters who were interviewed by telephone for the statewide poll this week said Utah should "repeal the current state law that offers the discounted resident college tuition rate to the children of undocumented immigrants." Ruth Bick, a 63-year-old Ogden resident, said Utahns should not have to pay taxes to subsidize a college education for undocumented students. The state's middle class already is burdened enough with big tax bills,...

State Senator Gill Cedillo, infamous for his effort to give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants has now wants to allow them to get grants provided to UC and CSU students and would make them eligible to receive the Community College Boar d of Governor’s Fee Waiver that would allow them to attend Community College in California for free. Read More...

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS | KC weighs costs, benefits One family’s struggle The Monroys, six without documents, work hard to provide for themselves, but they must rely on the social safety net, too.   Meet the Monroys, two illegal immigrants from Mexico.He prepares condiments for $8.25 an hour and cleans offices on the side. She chops vegetables for $8. Together they bring home $30,000 a year.That’s not enough for their family of seven in Overland Park. To get by, they need a little taxpayer help.Medicaid assistance for the baby’s delivery and for her doctor visits.Free breakfast and lunch at school for the...

$39M Katrina Gov't. Credit Charges Probed By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago Federal employees helping Katrina victims charged more than $39 million on government credit cards for disaster relief items. Congressional investigators want to make sure the taxpayers got a good deal. And a senator, citing past abuse, wants to know whether anyone used the cards for holiday shopping. Many of the goods, which included $60,639 for sleeping bags and $713 for four 27-inch televisions, were bought at retail rather than cheaper volume prices following the Aug. 29 storm, according to federal records. The spending also included...

June 15, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - A Houston hairdresser with a long rap sheet conned the feds into paying for his sex-change operation with Hurricane Katrina aid, it was revealed yesterday. In a shocking example of mismanagement and fraud in the widening FEMA fiasco, Michael James Green, 25, was charged with bilking the feds out of $36,000 meant for destitute hurricane victims. He claimed to have lived in 18 damaged addresses and used 18 different Social Security numbers, federal prosecutors said. But Green wasn't using the money for food and shelter: He used it to pay for a sex-change operation,...

WASHINGTON - As requests for emergency assistance poured in after Hurricane Katrina, one applicant listed as his address the Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans. FEMA promptly issued a check for $2,358 for rental assistance. That's just one of thousands of examples of alleged fraud and abuse described in a new report by the investigative arm of congress — abuse that cost taxpayers about $1 billion. One person applied for aid 13 times, using 13 bogus addresses, and received a total of $139,000. The report says FEMA didn't even try to verify the identity of people who applied for aid by...

A US Congressional inspection team set up to monitor reconstruction in Iraq has published a scathing report on failures by contractors to carry out projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In one case, the inspectors found that three years after the invasion only six of 150 health centres proposed for Iraq have been completed by a US contractor, in spite of 75 per cent of the $US186 million allocated having been spent. The report says: "Fourteen more will be completed by the contractor, and the remaining facilities, which are partially constructed, will have to be completed by other means."...

The government squandered millions of dollars in Katrina disaster aid, including handing $2,000 debit cards to people who gave phony Social Security numbers and used the money for such items as a $450 tattoo, auditors said Monday. Federal money also paid for $375-a-day beachfront condos and 10,777 trailers that were stuck in mud and unusable. Overcharges, poor accounting and abuses will take "months or years" to rectify, the Government Accountability Office and the Homeland Security Department's inspector general concluded in preliminary reports on how billions of dollars in taxpayer money is being spent. The Federal Emergency Management Agency recognizes it...

When congressional Republicans, a free-spending lot who have helped ratchet up federal spending to record levels, proposed slowing the rate of federal spending growth by a hair, congressional Democrats accused Republicans of wanting to starve the poor and recreate Dickensian England.That scenario, in a nutshell, explains the looming fiscal crisis at all levels of government. The debate is between those who want enormous government and those who want something even bigger than that. Hence, the Associated Press reported this week that "entitlement" spending is growing out of control. The word "entitlement" itself is a problem. Americans believe they are entitled...

FEMA Katrina Funeral Contractor Desecrated CorpsesThursday, 15 September 2005, 2:15 pm Article: Jason Leopold Division of Funeral Corp. Charged With Desecrating Corpses Hired to Collect Deceased Victims of Hurricane Katrina By Jason LeopoldA funeral services company which recently learned that one of its subsidiaries is negotiating a lucrative contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to remove dead bodies in areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, paid $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit several years ago alleging the company desecrated thousands of corpses, and dumped bodies into mass graves.Moreover, the company paid $200,000 to settle a whistleblower lawsuit that sought...

It is one of the secrets of the Beltway: Washington loves disasters. With large-scale disasters, government expands, its friends get wealthy and citizens become as docile as kittens. That is why Congress calls it "disaster relief" — the relief is from the usual restrictions on revenue spending and individual responsibility.

Add another name to the list of residents at the Cape Cod military base where evacuees from Hurricane Katrina are staying. But this one didn't need a plane to get there. Dionne White of New Orleans gave birth Tuesday at Falmouth Hospital to a boy whom she named Cape Cod Bannister, or C.C. for short. It's the first birth to an evacuee staying at Camp Edwards. "I named him that because I love Cape Cod," White told The Boston Globe. "Coming here has been a big break for me. It's like Christmas, just a big old miracle. And you don't...

WASHINGTON -- The House approved $6.1 billion in tax breaks Wednesday to help families recover from Hurricane Katrina and to encourage Gulf Coast businesses to reopen their doors, or at least keep employees on the payroll. The House passed the bill 422-0 as the Bush administration urged residents to get out of the way of another approaching storm, Hurricane Rita, threatening Louisiana and Texas. The vote sent the bill to the Senate, where lawmakers hoped for quick final approval. "This aid comes at exactly the right time to help victims of Hurricane Katrina as they rebuild their lives," said Treasury...

George W. Bush, after five years in the presidency, does not intend to get sucker-punched by the Democrats over race and poverty. That was the driving force behind his Katrina speech last week. He is not going to play the part of the cranky accountant--"But where's the money going to come from?"--while the Democrats, in the middle of a national tragedy, swan around saying "Republicans don't care about black people," and "They're always tightwads with the poor." In his Katrina policy the president is telling Democrats, "You can't possibly outspend me. Go ahead, try. By the time this is over...