Maine Republicans Push Divisive Budget Bill Forward
| Maine Public Broadcasting Network, 05/15/2012, Reported By: A.J. Higgins | |||||||||
| The halls of the State House are busy again today, as Republicans are uniting in an effort to remove 24,000 more Mainers from the state’s Medicaid rolls. Democrats are opposing the $56 million supplemental budget package that is crafted to address what the governor and other GOP leaders claim is unsustainable human services spending. | |||||||||
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| Some made references to baseball batting averages. Others likened the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to a nice home with a bad foundation. State Sen. Roger Katz, an Augusta Republican, opted for a nautical metaphor. “The DHH budget has sprung a leak and we think it’s better to plug that leak rather than hope that the ship is miraculously going to heal itself,” Katz said.
Members of the Maine Senate were the first to take up the amended supplemental budget which, according to the legislative budget office, is pegged at about $56 million dollars. The new package has been revised from the proposal first offered by Gov. Paul LePage, who has consistently battled with the Legislature over spending on the state’s Medicaid program, known as MaineCare. Maine’s reliance on Medicaid programs exceeds the national average by 35 percent. State Sen. Richard Rosen, a Bucksport Republican who co-chairs the Appropriations Committee, says that can’t continue. “Perhaps the greatest challenge for our committee and the Legislature this session has been managing the MaineCare and MaineCare related programs as we watch our federal funding decline and we careen over the dreaded financial cliff, losing hundreds of millions of dollars of one-time stimulus funding,” Rosen said. Rosen pointed out that Republicans have honored an earlier agreement with Democrats on funding for municipal general assistance programs. And he says in some cases, Republicans have opted to reduce program funding rather than go along with the governor on complete cuts. What Republicans can’t do, Rosen said, is to maintain a state spending track that’s guaranteed to plunge the state into the red. “Approval of this majority report along with our previous work will hand to our sucessors in the 126th Legislature a budget that is sound and balanced for the first time in many years,” he said. State Sen. Dawn Hill, of Cape Neddick, was among those Democrats who are disturbed by the new human services proposal, “because I do consider it a sham, I do consider it a shift, a shaft and truthfully, a shame.” Hill said. Like other Democrats, Hill is not happy about the assumptions the administration has made in its request for a Medicaid waiver that would lower the income eligibility for recipients. Hill says the waiver request, pegged earlier this year at $37 million dollars, has already been dismissed by some federal officials as unlikely to be approved–an outcome that she says will create a shortfall for the state. State Sen. Phil Bartlett, a Gorham Democrat, says the Republicans’ were determined to build a budget that they could take on the campaign trail–whether it balanced or not. “The only way to get around that is to go to the federal government and say, ‘Please give us a waiver, waivers that we know are probably not going to be granted,'” Bartlett said. “They haven’t been granted to any other state in the union and the indications that we’ve gotten from the federal government is that they’re not going to start with Maine. So this budget from the get-go is not balanced. Why do it then? Why include these provisions that we know are going to get tossed out?” The Senate rebuffed one attempt from Democrats to amend the plan, then approved the majority budget along party lines and sent it to the House for further votes. |
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