Republican governors against Bush’s Medicaid cuts — with one notable exception

While Bush’s 2006 budget, and its proposed cuts, have drawn the ire of many, one of the most interesting responses has come from Republican governors in response to the White House’s desire to cut Medicaid.

Governors of both parties are uniting to oppose President Bush’s proposed cuts to Medicaid while also pushing for much larger changes, arguing that soaring costs have forced a fundamental re-examination of the program that provides health care to 52 million poor, elderly and disabled.

This isn’t entirely new. As soon as Bush started hinting about his intentions, as far back as December, even conservative governors started expressing their concerns.

“I certainly understand the need to balance the federal budget,” said Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican and the vice chairman of the governors association. “But people need to remember that to balance the federal budget off the backs of the poorest people in the country is simply unacceptable. You don’t pull feeding tubes from people. You don’t pull the wheelchair out from under the child with muscular dystrophy.”

This from a very conservative Republican from a southern Red state.

And while the dynamic of a GOP White House battling GOP governors over cuts to health care for the poor is interesting enough, it’s also worth noting that there’s one governor who’s bucking the national trend and who seems anxious to cut Medicaid — Mississippi’s Haley Barbour.

Barbour, a lobbyist turned Republican Party chairman turned governor, is having the same trouble every other governor is having balancing his budget and finding money for state health care programs. Barbour’s solution was more callous than most — he cut 50,000 low-income families off of Medicaid.

When critics protested that the cuts would expose these people to substantial new medical bills, Barbour insisted the new Medicare drug benefit would take care of them — even though Medicare’s benefit, which is less comprehensive, won’t even start until 2006.

Then Barbour began ranting about Medicaid fraud. “I’m not going to make people who work two and three and four jobs to support their families and pay their taxes have to pay for people to get free health care who could work but choose not to.” But the people Barbour was ousting from Medicaid weren’t lazy; they were part of Mississippi’s PLAD program, as in “Poverty Level Aged and Disabled,” meaning age or disability keeps them from working.

Soon Barbour got a lesson in the difference between Washington, where budget cuts look like numbers on a spreadsheet, and state capitals, where budget cuts look like your neighbor’s elderly aunt. After legislators passed Barbour’s proposal, they came home to crowds of irate constituents.

To help undo Barbour’s damage, the Mississippi legislature has been weighing a 50-cent levy on cigarette packs. But guess what? Barbour is a former lobbyist for the tobacco industry and he’s fighting that too.

And Republicans wonder why we call them heartless.