Looking for problems in all the wrong places

Congress has a lot of big problems to solve. Unfortunately, rather than solving those problems, they are trying to fix things that aren't broken. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has issued a report on the number of people by state that could be hurt by the new requirement to produce a birth certificate or a passport to prove they are U.S. citizens in order to continue in the Medicaid program. There are no exceptions.

The number of people in Wisconsin that are affected by this is 885,000. And before you start blurting out the same ineffective arguments used for the voter ID bill here, consider a couple of things the report mentions:

-A recent study by the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services shows to be unnecessary.

-It would increase Medicaid administrative costs.

-A particular problem exists for a large number of elderly African Americans because they were born in a time when racial discrimination in hospital admissions, especially in the South, as well as poverty, kept their mothers from giving birth at a hospital. One study estimated that about one in five African Americans born in the 1939-40 period lack a birth certificate because of these problems.

And of course consider the people that lost everything in the hurricanes that hit the Southern U.S. this year. Their birth certificates and passports are anywhere from two states over from where they live to the bottom of a lake. The papers and mail from folks in the McFarland tornado last year where found in four different counties.

What a great time to force these folks into a bureaucratic mess. Ah the Republicans, the party of smaller government.