They’re back.
Hard-headed, stubborn and, rest assured they will tell each of us, doing their very doggone best as the dog days of summer encroach. Think it’s steamy, with heavy air and hard to move here?
Ain’t nothing like Raleigh.
Our General Assembly is a block north of where the governor does business. Takes minutes to walk it, forever to get anything done between the two.
Gov. Roy Cooper has drawn a hard line for the state budget. He wants Medicaid expansion. In addition, he has a difference of opinion with Republican-led legislators on public education and the economy.
The state House and Senate resolved their differences last month, ahead of the July 1 start of the fiscal year. They offered a $24 billion budget, about half a billion dollars less than Cooper’s first offering.
He came back with another offer. It spends more.
Medicaid expansion proponents are beating one drum for which there is no disagreement. Healthy outcomes increase in all areas — opioids, mental health, increased primary care visits for kids, overall health for parents and kids.
The rub comes when politicians talk about cost. Democrats swear the money is already there, in federal dollars.
But that’s not the whole story. Consider Ohio, one of 37 states where Medicaid was expanded. Eighteen months later, the state program was $1.5 billion over budget. Costs rose 35 percent from 2013 to 2017.
That’s just one state. Whether a state expands or not, experts say Medicaid spending has grown 88 percent in the last decade, or twice total state spending. And we’ve got a state Department of Health and Human Services shown fiscally irresponsible, having been exposed earlier this year with $100 million of Medicaid errors.
Unless Democrats cross the aisle to override Cooper, we’re stuck. Important moves will not happen: a 5 percent raise for most state employees; a 3.9 percent average raise for teachers; $4.4 billion to fund capital needs of schools, and another $1.4 billion in funding for public education over the next two years; funds to clear the state’s rape kit backlog; funds for the Human Trafficking Commission; even that $300,000 to get the ball moving for Kelly to possibly repair its dike.
Between the GOP legislators and the Democratic governor, it’s all on hold.
Two years ago, the Democrats raised Cain because Republicans had another round of tax relief in the budget. They said there would be a budget shortfall of $1.4 billion by 2019.
Didn’t happen. In fact, there’s a surplus.
And CNBC is the most recent to join the bandwagon hailing our state’s economy, calling it the nation’s best.
Neither political side is perfect. On this Medicaid expansion argument, there is fiscal caution to be respected and good health outcomes not to be dismissed.
Jones Street in the summer: where the pavement is hot, politicians posture and the people of North Carolina need a resolution.