Romney getting heat for 2003 veto he cast against funds for poor Jewish nursing-home residents

WASHINGTON — Let them eat pork!
Mitt Romney is getting heat for a 2003 veto he cast as governor of Massachusetts to reject $600,000 in additional funds for poor Jewish nursing-home residents to get kosher meals.

At the time, Romney said he nixed the funding of about $5 per day because it “unnecessarily” would lead to an “increased rate for nursing facilities” — even as kosher nursing homes were complaining that state-funding-formula changes could force them to close their kitchens.

“I was outraged,” Jeffrey Goldshine, the retired CEO of a company that operated a kosher facility in Massachusetts, told The Post yesterday.

Romney’s spokesman defended his opposition, saying the state was in crisis and the kosher funding veto was needed to head off higher reimbursement rates for Medicaid.

But Brooklyn state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, an Orthodox Jew and Newt Gingrich booster, called the veto insensitive.

“Well, `let them eat pork or let them eat something else’ — if you’re kosher, you’re not eating anything else. It’s just that simple. Why Romney didn’t get it at that particular time is disappointing and quite shocking to me.”  Read more