These are the people who suffered when Kansas's conservative experiment failed
By Ana Swanson and Max Ehrenfreund June 14 at 7:00 AM
IOLA, Kan. — Suzan Emmons has done the most she can for the girls. Her small green house has bunnies in the back yard, class pictures proudly displayed on the living room wall, food in the refrigerator. She has scrimped from her annual salary of $14,000 to pay for one dance class each: tap for Elizabeth, jazz for Jaiden. But far-off political decisions have made the haven that Emmons built for them more precarious.
Five years ago, she rescued Jaiden, her granddaughter, and Elizabeth, her granddaughter’s half sister, from a dangerous home. Today, she doesn't make enough money to qualify for health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. She would qualify for Medicaid under Obamacare’s proposed expansion of the program, but because the Kansas governor turned down federal funds for that expansion, she doesn't qualify there either, leaving her unable to afford insurance coverage.
Meanwhile, dramatic funding cuts at the state levels shuttered the programs that gave the girls a safe place to go when Emmons was at work and that counseled them to overcome their trauma.
The combination of deep tax cuts and austere spending that was supposed to ignite economic growth and reduce dependency have hit hard in the southeastern corner of Kansas, where Emmons lives, a collection of some of the poorest and sickest counties in the state that is sometimes branded the Appalachia of the Midwest.
Emmons is an involuntary participant in a conservative program of tax decreases and spending cuts that Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, the policy's main architect, once called a "real-live experiment." The Kansas legislature voted to partially unwind these policies last week, when it raised taxes and spending in a revolt against Brownback.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/14/these-are-the-people-who-suffered-when-kansas-conservative-experiment-failed/
