The long — very long — awaited welfare report from the Alexander Group, tainted by incorrect mathematics in its Medicaid section and serious questions about its objectivity, was finally released in on Thursday after multiple missed deadlines and extensions granted without penalty.

The report, which will cost Maine taxpayers $925,000, was largely what most people expected it to be — a very expensive pep rally for the Governor’s draconian welfare policies.

One of the suggestions in the report is that Maine apply for a so-called “global waiver” for its $2.5 billion MaineCare program.

A global waiver, according to the report, would keep MaineCare from growing, and without it, according to Alexander, the share of the general fund spent on MaineCare would grow to 36.2 percent by 2023.

What Alexander somehow failed to recognize is that Maine attempted to obtain a waiver in 2011, failed, appealed, and was denied again. Maine voluntarily expanded its Medicaid program in 2008 and 2009; it is never going to get a waiver, global or not, and the federal government has made that abundantly clear.

We could have given the LePage administration that bad news for free. If Alexander had asked, we could have saved him a great deal of time, too.

The report also suggests joining a 10- state pilot program that would create work-training requirements within Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs, requiring TANF recipients to seek work, paying childcare providers directly, and cutting aid to municipalities for General Assistance.

A back-door approach to recoup some of those revenue sharing funds LePage calls “municipal welfare”, we trust.

The report has missed multiple deadlines, but still, Maine taxpayers have already paid half a million bucks for a report that seems to be nothing new, and more of the same villification of the poor.

We believe we have a good idea what would happen to our paychecks if we missed our deadlines, or if an unemployed person failed to turn in a job search on time, and it wouldn’t be to get a $500,000 check for our trouble.

We, the long-suffering taxpayers of Maine, are paying a man who is already a millionaire almost another million to tell us — late — what LePage has been preaching at us for years: The poor must be punished for being poor or disabled.

LePage’s spokeswoman, Adrienne Bennett, says that this report is an “objective and comprehensive analysis.” Really?

In fact, the report does nothing to improve welfare; its sole mission is to undercut the poorest among us to benefit the richest.

And those, we notice, who are taking much bigger bites at the taxpayer trough than the poor ever could … people like Gary Alexander himself.

It is unfortunate that the Republican minority prevented the shredding of this particularly vile bit of political gamemanship.

Gary Alexander and his little group were granted this expensive report without a competitive bidding process. LePage didn’t want to risk hiring someone who might not agree with him.

Make no mistake. Gov. LePage is staking his political future on his erroneous belief that Mainers hate the poor as much as he does. This report is a campaign ad, and will be used as such from now until November.

Why would LePage bother raising funds for campaign ads when all he had to do is use taxpayer monies to buy one?