{"id":764,"date":"2005-04-18T14:46:52","date_gmt":"2005-04-18T18:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/000af36.netsolhost.com\/wordpress1\/2005\/04\/18\/the_unspoken_is\/"},"modified":"2005-04-18T14:46:52","modified_gmt":"2005-04-18T18:46:52","slug":"the_unspoken_is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2005\/04\/18\/the_unspoken_is\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unspoken Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The cost of Medicaid, a health-care program for the poor, is ballooning, sopping up at least 20 percent of this year&#8217;s $1 billion surplus. This is not an isolated event. Rather, it is part of a pattern of budget-busting problems that &#8212; the 2004 tax increase notwithstanding &#8212; could again imperil Virginia&#8217;s recently reaffirmed Triple-A credit rating, the highest possible.<\/p>\n<p>But Medicaid is not sexy. For starters, most voters have no contact with the program. Thus, it has a small and almost voiceless constituency. Further, because Medicaid&#8217;s purpose, structure and financing are difficult to explain, the candidates just don&#8217;t.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesdispatch.com\/scripts\/isapi_srun.dll\/servlet\/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&#038;c=MGArticle&#038;cid=1031782188930&#038;path=%21news%21columnists&#038;s=1045855935174&#038;DPL=JPsPDSL7ChA75gkNJuA7&#038;tacodalogin=yes\">Jeff Schapiro\u2019s take<\/a> on the shallow gubernatorial campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The cost of Medicaid, a health-care program for the poor, is ballooning, sopping up at least 20 percent of this year&#8217;s $1 billion surplus. This is not an isolated event. Rather, it is part of a pattern of budget-busting problems that &#8212; the 2004 tax increase notwithstanding &#8212; could again imperil Virginia&#8217;s recently reaffirmed Triple-A&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2005\/04\/18\/the_unspoken_is\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}