Schapiro: Budget might create holes for future governors

Attention Kmart shoppers: Watch out for the low-income family in the dairy section, loading up on eggs and milk.

That, in effect, is the implied message of a little-noticed provision in Gov. Bob McDonnell's proposed two-year, $85 billion budget. The Republican wants to spend $200,000 — half of it state money; half of it federal — to change the timetable for distributing food stamps.

They'd be divvied over three days, rather than on one, which is the practice in only nine states. With the switch, grocery stores, from big-box to mom-and-pop, aren't hit by a wave of food-stamp recipients — actually, they're issued debit cards — snapping up inventory that's supposed to last several days.

Talk about a compassionate conservative. McDonnell looks as if he's watching out for those less fortunate than himself while literally taking care of business, a source of campaign cash. Retailers, lobbying for the change, and service industries pumped $4.7 million into Virginia political coffers last year.

Woven into McDonnell's legacy budget — it's the only one over which he has near-total control and it pays for programs beyond his term — are proposals, tiny and titanic, that dramatically affect the delivery of health care and welfare. They could also leave fiscal holes that future governors will have to fill.

The paradox of the McDonnell budget is that while it is $7 billion fatter than its predecessor, it includes about $1 billion in reductions, the bulk falling on human services — programs usually supported by sales-tax revenues, of which McDonnell, in an unusual move, would seize $110 million over the next two years for roads.

Happy face notwithstanding, McDonnell makes no secret of his hostility to federal health care reform and says Virginia won't put in place the requisite benefits exchange — that's a fancy term for safety net — until, and if, the U.S. Supreme Court declares the Obama initiative constitutional.

Meanwhile, what passes for a safety net is frayed under the McDonnell budget. He wants to cut $6.4 million from community health clinics. It would be a bipartisan reduction, hitting clinics in Democratic cities and the Republican countryside. McDonnell also eliminates $450,000 to steer low-income kids toward regular health care, but assumes the feds will come up with $16 million for just that.

The treatment of nursing homes seems contradictory. McDonnell proposes restoring $10 million lopped last year, but wants to eliminate $75 million in inflation adjustments. That could prove costlier because, if Virginia isn't more generous with nursing homes, Washington would be less generous with the state, erasing up to $75 million in matching funds.

Hospitals are stung, too; nearly $520 million in inflation adjustments are imperiled.

Long-term care loses $36 million. That means 4,500 fewer folks get into nursing homes. Perhaps it's a coincidence, but the number of people affected by this reduction is roughly the same as the pool of intellectually disabled Virginians whom the state — under a civil rights settlement with Washington announced Thursday — must shift from institutions to community care. Could the administration have trimmed one expecting higher costs for the other?

And while all this money would be spent on the least well-off Virginians — not a growth market for Republicans — it nonetheless flows through an important sector of the state's economy, which candidate McDonnell vowed to stabilize.

The Virginia Employment Commission says health care is the third-largest source of jobs in the state, behind retail and professional services. More than 100 hospitals and other facilities employ nearly 123,000 people, generating $17.5 billion in revenue, according to the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association.

But maybe McDonnell, heading into the downhill side of his term and still hoping to become a national power, figures he can just do so much; that it's all water under the bridge. But he's making a splash there, too, scrapping $717,000 for clean water in poor communities.