[e40]

I hope you don't get voted down, because it's just the way things are. It is really mind boggling how many GOP supporters try and deny this. What has happened in FL since the early 00's is just criminal. How opponents of Rick Scott couldn't get him ejected from office is a mystery to me, if it's not solely "money in politics."

[atria]

I hope it gets voted down. It was John F. Kennedy that introduced the Community Mental Health act of 1963 to close down and defund mental institions. The idea of cutting spending for mental facilities was put forth by the Democratic party, not GOP. Both parties have continued ever since.

[thrownaway666]

No. This is an old, standard Republican mis-talking point that (as usual) is unsupported by facts.

The Community Mental Health act was fully funded at the time it was passed, to the tune of $330 million, and received almost $2 billion over the next decade. It was an example of an INCREASE in federal funding for mental health, put forth by Democrats, and bitterly opposed by Republicans.

Individual states, with Republican blessing, were the culprits in not continuing to fund local clinics. Then in 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan changed federal mental health funding to make it a block grant, spendable by states any old way they chose. And many chose NOT to spend it on mental health. Not content to turn Californians with mental illness out in the street (which he did as California governor), he decided he'd do that to America at large.

Don't try to blame Dems for standard Republican obstructionism that damaged and continues to damage public health.

[kbenson]

The problem, and this applies to both parties and liberals and conservatives, is that politics is rarely evidence based. It's anecdote based, because that's what's easier to get people to relate to. There are plenty of liberal policies that are disasters, just as there are conservative ones, but if you attempt to change them it's an attack on that ideology, regardless of how well the policy is working in practice. The biggest problem with politics isn't that politicians are insular and out for themselves and their own interests/area, it's that they've all got their heads stuck so far into the ground they don't even know whether what they are doing is actually helping or hurting. Confirmation bias at its worst and most harmful.

[e40]

Uh, no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Mental_Health_Act

First, defunding and not funding are two different things.

Second, congress has to fund it, not the POTUS.

Third, you're one of those "they're both the same" but they're not both the same.

[fredgrott]

of course that is not the only Kennedy miss-step towards appropriate funding of mental health..there was the case of JFK's sister: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy