Hearings on budget cuts to health and human services began this week, raising the specter of another brutal summer of political deal-making. One budget cut from last year, though, has since come into a new and harsher light.
Michael Rothfeld of the Los Angeles Times wrote about one decision to eliminate a $3 million program aimed at reducing deaths among African American babies. In a profile of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hard-charging, cigar-smoking chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, he wrote:
Schwarzenegger eviscerated funding for the Black Infant Health Program, one Kennedy knew was important to Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D- Los Angeles), after Bass failed to deliver approval of new offshore oil drilling as they'd agreed.
Schwarzenegger's press office did not return a call or e-mail on the matter yesterday. For her part, Kennedy posted the Times profile on her Facebook page with a disclaimer: "I'm not as scary as they say."
Could this have been a cold calculus of weighing political loyalty against an effort to save babies? “When we’re talking about children’s lives, vendettas should be out of the question,” said Steve Maviglio, a Democratic political strategist.
It’s a version of events that Bass herself hinted at in a statement she issued in July after the program was axed.
The governor’s actions today have not just caused harm; his actions today put lives in jeopardy. He is cutting funding for the Black Infant Health Program at a time when African American babies have a mortality rate three times higher than white babies. … Earlier in the budget process the governor threatened to veto bills that charged oil companies the same fair share severance tax they pay in other states ... Had the governor not stood up for big oil and big tobacco, these devastating cuts also could have been avoided.
Schwarzenegger's evisceration of the program was an abrupt about-face from his lavish praise only a year before. In February 2008, the governor issued an official proclamation emphasizing the importance of the program and designating the week of February 17 to 23 as “Black Infant Week.”
California has made strides in the infant mortality rate, but it still saddens me to hear that African-American babies die at a higher rate than babies of other racial/ethnic groups. This is not acceptable.
The proclamation notes that African American women also have a higher rate of pre-term deliveries and face a higher risk of dying during pregnancy. “These heartbreaking facts remind us that there is still hard work to be done to ensure the health of all mothers and newborns,” the proclamation says, urging "all Californians" to join Schwarzenegger "in improving the health of African American babies."
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