Over at SEIUVoice.org there is a petition to Governor Schwarzenegger asking him not to balance the budget using cuts that hurt homecare workers.  The Governor is proposing to cut state funding for In-Home
Supportive Services, which helps provide crucial assistance to thousands of
elderly and disabled people in California.  The
proposal would reduce state funding for homecare workers to minimum wage and eliminate care.  This would cause thousands of workers to lose their health benefits.

here’s the thing: it would also force many current homecare patients into nursing homes.  So in future years this would be a
far greater cost to the state.

Here is the wording from the petition page:

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger-

Balancing the budget shouldn’t be done on the backs of homecare workers whose hard work allows hundreds of thousands of Californians to live safely and with dignity in their own homes.  Cutting California’s homecare workers to the minimum wage with drastic cuts in benefits is unacceptable.

I stand in solidarity with the homecare workers who are gathering on Saturday, January 24th in Sacramento, San Francisco and Fresno to stop the cuts.

Go to the page and sign the petition.

Society is only as strong as its weakest link, and it is the responsibility of the people and our government to protect those who are genuinely unable to care for themselves.  We are morally and duty bound to do whatever we can to assure every human being a level of basic dignity. That is what these workers provide for those whom they serve.  We are talking here about cutting this kind of care rather than, for example, asking oil companies to pay something when they take our oil out of the ground to sell back to us.  How have we gotten to this point?