The scandal in plain view

Today’s Star Tribune reports that Minnesota’s budget situation has become so grim that the state may have to terminate health insurance subsidies to illegal aliens. That’s not quite the interpretation the Star Tribune provides to the events, of course, but here is the last paragraph of the Strib’s page-one story on the enormities that might be caused by Governor Tim Pawlenty’s proposed “budget cuts”: “Maria Elena Hernandez, 50, said she would like to ask Pawlenty to walk a mile in her shoes. ‘It would be good to see the immigrants’ situation,’ she said during a visit Friday to La Clinica. An illegal immigrant, she has lived in St. Paul for eight years, mostly cleaning houses to earn a few hundred dollars a month. Under the governor’s proposal, she would lose her state insurance, which covers her medications for diabetes and heart disease. She said she doesn’t know what she would do without the state program. Cleaning houses, she said, doesn’t get her insurance benefits.”
Incidentally, the Strib story helpfully provides law enforcement authorities a photo of Ms. Hernandez. I must be missing something here. I too would like to ask Governor Pawlenty and other state and federal law enforcement authorities to walk a mile in my shoes. Wouldn’t you? The Strib story is “Pawlenty plan could increase number of uninsured.”

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