Okay, there's a fight going on in my mentions, so let's do means testing for disability benefits 101.
First, people with disabilities rely on a f*** ton of benefits usually. This often includes Medicaid, housing supports via Section 8, nutrition assistance via SNAP, various state benefits, and some type of primary income assistance via the Social Security Administration.
Medicaid has asset/resource limits and income tests. The Affordable Care Act eased a lot of these up to the federal poverty level in states that opposed to giving health care to poor people.
You want to know what the Kavanaugh hearings did for me? When they ignored the fact that their candidate had ruled in favor of forcing women with disabilities to have abortions? Sure. Let's call it radicalization.
During the Kavanaugh hearings, I worked for an organization that takes positions on judicial nominees based on their prior decisions. I now work for an organization that broke decades of precedent to oppose the Kavanaugh nomination because of his disability jurisprudence.
To all those who have been seeking mental health treatment in the past six months because we're in a pandemic and it's really stressful, how easy is has it been? (It hasn't been, I know. I'm sorry.)
But I ask this because I think people assume it's easy to find help. Until they do it. And then they might think that it's easier somehow for people who have serious needs. It isn't.
And the hardest part of all is finding help that acknowledges the problems of the current system.
All right. I've had a couple glasses of wine and it's been a really, really long week. So let's talk about the legislative filibuster.
The filibuster is the rule that the Senate has that certain things requires 60 votes rather than a simple 51 vote majority.
You may be confused by this because a lot of legislation has been considered lately that is only required 51 votes. The most prominent example of this would be the 2017 health care fight over the repeal of Obamacare.