Romney rapped for kosher cut

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 meal 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.

For the elderly Jewish residents of a nursing home that have always been kosher — they should be entitled to continue.”

The Massachusetts Legislature approved an amendment to restore the $600,000 to finance the kosher meals allowing a “most vulnerable segment of our population’’ to “enjoy a special dignity,” according to the Jewish Community Council.

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.”

“People who are kosher — it’s not a choice they have,” fumed Hikind (D-Brooklyn) who said the issue will hurt Romney in his close race with Gingrich in Florida.

Everybody understands what kosher is. You have huge communities of Jews who eat only kosher and you have a huge community of senior citizens, of older people,” Hikind said. “People are going to want to know why.”