Walker losses get worse; Wisconsinites missing out on $400 million Medicaid Expansion Savings.

“Fiscal conservatives” must see money management in an oddly different way from the rest of us. 

I guess holding onto a firmly held belief, makes losing money justifiable and something to be proud of?

So it goes with Medicaid expansion, a roaring success for tough love austerity fanatics proving we can all handle a little monetary disappointment and loss. Citizen Action of Wisconsin: 

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau in March tallied a net loss of $345 million to the next state budget as a consequence of Governor Walker’s decision to reject enhanced federal funding for BadgerCare … New data released this week by the Fiscal Bureau, and analyzed by Jon Peacock shows that the cost … for BadgerCare has gone up again, because roughly 6,800 additional childless adults will be in BadgerCare than previously projected. An additional $23 million, on top of the original $345 million.

Walker once said he wanted all of us to get high wage jobs, and drop all that talk about hiking the minimum wage.  “Stand with Walker” voters ate it up while real workers wished they'd gotten a wage hike:

One of the reasons for increasing BadgerCare enrollment is the number of poverty wage jobs being created in Wisconsin.

Even worse, these stewards of taxpayer money aren’t so frugal after all. For the second time they're wasting our hard earned money covering up for one of the biggest flaws in their decision to skip Medicaid Expansion; hospitals are taking a huge monetary hit treating people without health care now, so...:

In addition, Walker’s budget includes an additional $30 million (again) in state dollars for Disproportionate Share Hospital payments to partially make up for the financial impact on hospitals of turning down the enhanced BadgerCare money. This increased expenditure is only necessary because Wisconsin is turning down enhanced federal funding for BadgerCare.

Adding together the cost to the state  $398 million in the next two year state budget alone, more than enough to reverse most of the slashing cuts to education in the Governor’s budget.