Lord only knows what Gov. Jeb Bush would do without Charles VanMiddlesworth and Tom Soule.
VanMiddlesworth, the retired owner of a family-run accounting firm, is the president of the St. Petersburg Lions Club. Soule, a real estate agent, is in charge of a club committee that does what Lions throughout the country are known for - giving people who cannot otherwise afford it the chance to see.
This puts VanMiddlesworth and Soule in a unique position to watch Bush's full frontal assault on Medicaid.
The governor wants Medicaid overhauled, top to bottom, because it's eating up too much of the state budget. The cost has doubled in the past six years.
Bush is right about the Medicaid challenge. But rather than chase after problems at the top, like the corporate income tax cheats who owe millions and could contribute to a solution, Bush is simply chipping away at the state's biggest program for care of those at the bottom.
Last July, for instance, the state stopped paying for eyeglasses for the needy.
The result was a perverse version of trickle-down economics: The number of people who sought help from the Lions Club Sight Clinic at the Sunshine Center in downtown St. Petersburg more than doubled from 25 people a month to 60.
The Lions do wonderful work, arranging for people to get eye exams and eyeglasses from specialists who discount their services. But this goodness doesn't come cheap. Eyecare costs the club $4,000 a month, money that comes out of fundraising and bequests.
Bush may think voluntary groups like the Lions can pay for more and more social services - remember his famously irresponsible remark about imagining all the state buildings empty and unnecessary - but the Lions don't quite see things that way. There's a limit to what they can do, VanMiddlesworth said.
"We're going to be able to do this the next two or three years," he said. "We're hoping that then the state will come back and start providing (eyeglasses) again."
Fat chance.
Bush is sitting on $400-million in federal Medicaid money that he refuses to put into the program.
When he stopped payments for eyecare for those on Medicaid, he also ended paying for hearing aids and dentures. All that hurt produced relatively little in savings - $14.5-million, according to Florida Legal Services.
Bush pressed on. His administration has cut support for the developmentally disabled. Payments to hospitals and nursing homes are on the chopping block. The Legislature has just added money for medical care for poor children, but also toughened the rules that permit children to get care.
The governor says he wants people who get Medicaid to be more responsible for their health care. He makes it sound as though they're lazy, careless and the sole makers of their misfortune.
Homeless people? People just out of jail and trying to start over? People trying desperately in a sour economy to get work that they can't do if they can't read?
These are the kind of people helped by the St. Petersburg Lions Club.
"I try not to be bitter about the fact that the state has all these resources and chooses to spend the money the way they do," said Soule.
"Rather than worry and anguish about (it) ... we just concentrate on what things we can do," he said. "The challenges get greater every year."
When I inquired Tuesday, a spokesman for the governor pointed out that Bush himself does not have eye care included in his state health insurance. Bush, a millionaire, has to pay an eye care premium all by himself. I hope we're not expected to feel sorry for the guy. Or are we supposed to conclude that it's unfair that the governor has to pay for something that the poor, under Medicaid, once got for free?
You may think eyeglasses are no big deal. Try going a day or two without yours. Try being in the position of Charles VanMiddlesworth or Tom Soule. These are men who see a need. These are men who, unlike Jeb Bush, do not look away.
