Democratic candidate Judy Baker, 52, will push forward a statewide anti-poverty and self-sufficiency agenda if she is elected Missouri Lieutenant Governor, she said.
“I’ve been disappointed to see our state fall further into distress,” Baker said. “Compared to other states, we are low ranking on our investment in education, health outcomes and personal incomes. I would like to work on what the roots causes are. And I want to move Missouri where it needs to be by 2025.”
Baker, the Obama administration’s former regional director of the Department of Health & Human Services, is running against seven other Democratic candidates in the Aug. 7 primary election.
Baker is running for the office, she said, because the duties and interests of the Lieutenant Governor line up with her health-care and administrative background. The Lieutenant Governor makes important policy decisions – including issues effecting seniors, veterans, housing development and the health needs of minority seniors – by sitting on several boards and commissions. Baker intends to make sure the priorities in these commissions are integrated and cohesive, she said.
“One of those priorities is: how do we deliver community-based services that increase the quality of people’s lives and lower the cost overall?” she said.
As regional director of HHS, Baker worked with senior centers and other senior agencies to help assist seniors in living independently longer.
“That’s what most seniors want to do,” she said. “They don’t want to be rushed out to nursing homes. If we work on that kind of agenda, we can improve people’s lives and save on costs at the same time.”
Of course, this dual mission is at the heart of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which Baker helped to administer in the Midwest.
‘Stair steps out of poverty’
Many programs that help people in transitional times of their lives – such as Medicaid, food stamps, housing and unemployment – are designed with a “cliff,” she said.
For example, a family may rely on Medicaid to insure a child with a pre-existing condition, she said. In her experience this is common because some employers don’t cover families. Meanwhile, that parent is at constant risk of losing Medicaid coverage for a child if they would get even a 25 cent per hour raise.
“That has the effect of locking the working parent into a certain workplace and missing the chance to advance in their work,” Baker said.
“This contributes to a cycle of poverty that the system itself helps create due principally to the artificial cliffs that discourage advancement by the very individuals the program was designed to serve. The net effect is to cause a cliff – a fall from support instead of stair steps out of poverty.”
The Affordable Care Act addresses this cycle of poverty, Baker said. Health care reform allows individuals and small businesses to buy in to health care coverage according to their ability to pay and on a sliding scale.
“In other words, no cliff,” she said. “Many of our other programs, like housing, food assistance and unemployment might do well to adopt a similar model of gradual and measured steps from assistance to self-sufficiency.”
‘Local health care jobs’
The reform would also help the economy and provide jobs, she said.
If the Medicaid expansion is accepted, Missouri would receive $8.5 billion over five years to add hundreds of thousands of people to the program.
“You can’t help but realize that means local health care jobs,” Baker said.
“Those are really good, high-paying jobs. I think that we need to evaluate that opportunity for what it really is. There have been a lot of major reactions on both sides of the issue. I think we are going to have to step back and see what it really means for the state to turn away those dollars.”
Baker said the health care industry can also serve to boost tourism, which is another commission the lieutenant governor serves as a member.
“A growing number of folks from around the country come to Missouri for medical care, and I’ll use my health care background to increase those numbers,” she said.
The Lieutenant Governor does not serve on the education commission. However, under the constitution the Lieutenant Governor is president of the Missouri Senate. And Baker plans to use this position to bring a powerful voice to the education debate.
“As Lieutenant Governor, I would work with the Senate to build a strong education agenda based on the things that matter to the teacher and the classroom,” she said. “The cornerstone of a brighter future for our state rests on quality schools and affordable higher education.”
Baker’s experience and initiatives for the office have won over many St. Louis leaders and organizations. Her most notable endorsements include state Reps. Tishaura Jones, Tracy McCreery and Stacey Newman; state Senators Robin Wright-Jones and Former State Sen. Joan Bray; Committeepeople Mattie Moore, Ollie Stewart, Joe Palm and Patricia Bynes; and the Normandy Township, Ferguson Township, 22nd Ward, 28th Ward and Freedom, Inc. (Kansas City).
