Staff Report
“You can’t cut a billion dollars from the budget without it hurting Alabama’s working families. Our schools, law enforcement, and firefighters can’t afford any more cuts in their budgets. How are we going to keep and recruit quality teachers, firefighters, or law enforcement officers if we keep cutting their pay and benefits? The Republicans have cut so much from Medicaid that the program may collapse. This would have a devastating affect on hospitals and nursing homes and cut access to healthcare for everyone – not just seniors or children but even those who have health insurance. No one can go to a doctor if he went out of business because he lost funding from Medicaid.
If you are born with money, then maybe you won’t feel the pain of these cuts. But most people have to work for a living, and cutting funding for our schools, fire protection, law enforcement, and Medicaid will only put our safety, health and economic future in peril. We have cut the state budgets to the bone. Any more cuts would be dangerous and irresponsible.”
Representative Ford is a Democrat from Gadsden and the Minority Leader of the State House of Representatives. He has served in the Alabama House of Representatives since 2000. In 2010, Representative Ford was elected House Minority Leader by the House Democratic Caucus. He was re-elected Minority Leader in 2012.
