It’s election time, which means that Rick Scott wants to fool everyday folk into thinking that he cares about them.
A new campaign commercial shows the governor and U.S. Senate candidate in a public housing project. Scott reminds voters that he grew up in such a project and recalls the finance company repossessing the family car. Scott won’t rest, he says, until every Floridian has a chance to succeed.
As the spot closes, Scott bends down to pick up a piece of trash. It might be an effective ad for anyone who doesn’t know Scott’s record.
A United Way study found that nearly half of the state’s residents live in poverty or paycheck to paycheck. But the idea that Rick Scott has been their friend as governor and would be their friend in Washington is absurd.
That United Way study listed access to health care among five factors that protect people from becoming poor. Scott opposed the Affordable Care Act, through which nearly two million Floridians obtained coverage. Except for one brief moment, Scott also has opposed expanding Medicaid under the ACA. A 2015 Florida Senate study found that expansion could cover 800,000 working poor in Florida.
As governor of a state where the opioid crisis has been acute, Scott’s opposition is especially cruel. For low-income people whom the crisis has hit disproportionately hard, Medicaid is their only chance – outside of jail – to get treatment for substance abuse.
Losing a job can push people into poverty. Florida’s unemployment is near a record low, which is a good thing for many reasons. One of them is Gov. Scott’s treatment of those who are out of work.
In Florida, unemployment benefits last for only 12 weeks. That’s the shortest period for any state. Most give out-of-work residents at least 26 weeks.
The website 247wallst.com ran some numbers. Half of Floridians receiving unemployment benefits go through them before getting a new job. Payments are chintzy. In Florida, they amount to roughly 27 percent of the state’s average weekly wage. Nationwide, the figure is 34 percent.
One notable example of mismanagement under Scott was the October 2013 rollout of the CONNECT website through which Floridians must apply for unemployment benefits. Two years later, state legislators still were getting complaints.
Scott is blasting incumbent Bill Nelson as a “career politician” with a light record. Yet Nelson secured help from the Obama administration to help Floridians when CONNECT was failing.
In Florida, of course, people can be out of work even if they don’t lose their job. That happens after hurricanes, and it happened last year after Irma. Salaried employees usually come through in decent shape. Hourly workers and the self-employed face much more hardship.
Floridians can apply for disaster assistance if they lose wages. Last October, though, Miami New Times reported that the state had failed to update the website so it could distinguish between those seeking standard unemployment benefits and those seeking help because of the storm. Many lost out.
“It’s hilarious and also horrifying,” said Jennifer Hill of the Miami Workers Center. Hill said the state also did little to promote the assistance. About the same time, the Scott administration was mismanaging the state food assistance program for Irma victims.
Homeowner insurance also has become more costly. Scott has offered no plan to make it cheaper. Meanwhile, the Office of Insurance Regulation just reported that the cost to businesses for workers compensation coverage would drop another 13 percent next year.
There are other examples. Good schools give children a better chance to escape poverty, but Scott has signed budgets that continually short traditional public schools. Buying a home can get people out of housing projects, but Scott has signed budgets that sweep money from the state’s affordable housing trust fund. Much of that money helps the working poor make down payments on homes.
In his commercial, Scott wears the Navy cap he broke out when running for reelection in 2014. Yet Scott, who started a hospital company that defrauded the government, has bragged that his first business success was gouging shipmates for sodas that be bought onshore.
If Scott got himself up and out of that housing project, his policies offer no help to those who haven’t. Win or lose, his feigned compassion will end in November.