The White House seems to believe it has to start improving the budget picture somehow, and with tax cuts for the wealthy off limits, Bush seems anxious to start slicing Medicaid, which helps offer health care to low-income families.
Congressional Dems are anxious to get the federal budget back on the track to fiscal sanity, but will resist any attempt to finance improvements on the backs of the poor. Oddly enough, these Dems may have an unlikely ally — Republican governors.
Fearful that President Bush plans to shift more Medicaid costs to the states, the nation’s governors are mounting a bipartisan lobbying effort to stave off new federal limits on the program.
Medicaid, the nation’s largest health insurance program, is costing the states and the federal government more than $300 billion a year. The growth of the program, which covers the poor and disabled, has outpaced state revenues, and Medicaid is now a larger component of total state spending than elementary and secondary education combined, according to the National Governors Association.
Showing rare bipartisan unity, governors of both parties said in interviews this week that they would press hard in the coming months to preserve or even increase their current Medicaid allotments.
“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.”
Congressional Republicans have ceded any attempts to be co-equals in Washington. If Bush wants it, DeLay, Frist, & Co. want to give it to him.
Governors, meanwhile, have their own states to run and have less of a stake in the beltway’s partisan squabbles. While Dennis Hastert can help Bush run up breathtaking debt, governors, regardless of party, have no such luxury. As a result, even guys like Huckabee, a very conservative Republican from a southern Red state, believe Bush’s approach is “unacceptable.”
And, of course, it’s not just Huckabee.
There’s Ohio’s Bob Taft (R)…
“They tried to cap it the last time around,” said Gov. Bob Taft of Ohio, a Republican. “Then, you’re asking the states to take a risk – what if the caseload grows?” That effort to make major changes in the program collapsed after lengthy negotiations between federal officials and a bipartisan group of governors…. We’re going to have to do cuts in services, cuts in people on the caseload. We’re going to have to freeze or possibly even cut some provider rates just to restrain the growth. It’s squeezing what we can do for schools, what we can do for higher education.”
…and Massachusetts’ Mitt Romney(R).
Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts is among several governors battling the Bush administration’s efforts to eliminate a practice some states use to get more federal Medicaid money. The federal government says these states’ practice of transferring money to county governments or local hospitals is a way to get more federal Medicaid money by making it appear that they are spending more on Medicaid than they are.
In Massachusetts, the Bush administration says $580 million in federal Medicaid money obtained using such a practice was an improper grant. Mr. Romney disagrees.
“This was a practice approved by the federal government, and it’s one of the ways that we provide health care to the poor and needy,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, Mr. Romney’s press secretary.
Next month there will be 28 Republican governors in America. Apparently, most, if not all, of them will be none too pleased about Bush’s Medicaid cuts. That’s 28 state chief executives fighting their own party’s president on the issue of health care for needy families, while congressional Dems are doing the same thing on Capitol Hill. It could get interesting.
And as long as we’re on the subject, the chairman of the National Governor’s Association is Virginia’s Mark Warner (D), who helped rally bi-partisan opposition to Bush’s proposed cuts. If, by chance, Warner were looking for a high-profile issue to, say, push him into the national limelight in advance of the 2008 presidential election, this could be a unique opportunity.