How will Trump presidency change Kansas?

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Rep. John Carmichael's party affiliation.

Donald Trump’s presidency will bring change to Kansas, but exactly how things will change is open to debate.

State-level Republicans and Democrats say some key areas they are watching are health, veterans affairs, international trade and immigration, all of which are heavily influenced by federal decisions and all issues where Trump has said he will reverse or dramatically change President Obama’s policies.

How you see that depends largely on your political perspective.

“On the main big issues, shrinking government, replacing Obamacare, reforming the tax structure, defending our borders, becoming a bordered nation and not a borderless nation, building the wall (at the Mexican border), immigration reform, those important issues that he ran on, he’ll be successful in getting those through both chambers of Congress and we’ll be a better, stronger and a richer nation,” said Mark Kahrs, a former Kansas state representative who resigned to take a seat on the Republican National Committee.

State Democrats hope some of Trump’s statements are just campaign bluster, and that he’ll settle into a more traditional role as president.

“It’s not going to be easy to do what he talked about on the campaign stump,” said Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, D-Wichita. “And I am hopeful – that’s the only thing we have now is hope – that he will try to do things for the good of all people because he is who we have right now and he is what he is. Which is, you know, wow, it’s still unbelievable, but we’ve got to work with what we’ve got. We’re all just going to wait and see together how it turns out.”

Health care

One of the ongoing debates at the Statehouse has been whether Kansas should accept additional federal funding through the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid, the program that provides medical care for the poorest residents of the state through the KanCare managed-care system.

At present, the poorest of the poor get medical service through KanCare, while those on the higher level of the low-income spectrum can have their health insurance subsidized through the ACA, better known as Obamacare.

But a court decision leaving the threshold for Medicaid eligibility to states has left a “donut hole” of working poor – about 56,000 Kansans – too rich for KanCare and too poor to get ACA subsidies.

For the past several sessions, Statehouse Democrats have tried to get Kansas to accept federal funding offered for Medicaid expansion through the ACA, while the majority Republicans and Gov. Sam Brownback have rejected it due to opposition to the federal health care law.

Trump has vowed to repeal the ACA and replace it with an as-yet-undefined substitute, and appears to have the congressional votes to do it. Although after the election, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he may keep two popular parts of the plan – forcing insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions and allowing kids to stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26.

Changes to the Affordable Care Act could render moot the argument over whether to accept federal money for expansion of Medicaid, since that money may no longer be available.

State Rep. Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita, said that was the first question on his mind when he woke up Wednesday morning. He’s the chairman of the House Republican Caucus and the Health and Human Services Committee.

“What the federal government does is going to have a huge effect,” he said. “You all of a sudden certainly see uncertainty there, so we have to figure it out.

“I don’t think it necessarily stops the debate, but it’s going to make people think, ‘What happens next?’ ”

His fellow Wichita Republican representative, John Whitmer, said he thinks Medicaid expansion will be DOA at the Statehouse.

“How do you expand Medicaid under the ACA if there is no ACA?” he said.

Jim Ward, the ranking Democrat on the Health and Human Services Committee, said he doesn’t think Trump and the Republican Congress will be able to change the system back to what it was before.

“I think there’s a difference between saying things on the stump and actually passing laws and standing up and looking at 20 million Americans and saying, ‘We’re taking your health care away from you now,’ ” Ward said.

As for Trump’s promise to “repeal and replace Obamacare,” Ward said, “They may pass something and call it something else,” but the fundamental contours of the health system will remain.

He said the one change he does see looming is that Congress may try to shift responsibility for Medicaid spending more to the states through block-grant funding, which he said would make the quality of people’s health care dependent on their state legislatures and governors.

“There’s a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of fear and apprehension in communities today as we await what actually does happen,” he said.

In the primary and general elections, 31 Brownback-supporting conservatives in the Kansas Legislature lost their seats to more moderate Republicans or to Democrats, creating a much larger bloc of votes for Medicaid expansion, Ward said.

Veterans affairs

Rep. Les Osterman, R-Wichita, said he agrees with Hawkins that health policy will have a major effect in Kansas. “As a state, we’ll be looking at stuff we didn’t look at yet.”

In his role as vice chairman of the Veterans, Military and Homeland Security Committee, Osterman said he is especially interested in seeing how the new administration will handle veterans’ health issues.

“I’m not happy with the care veterans are getting at the VA hospital,” Osterman said. “I know I’ll be doing some e-mails” to Washington.

Osterman said most of his contact with the federal government is through Rep. Mike Pompeo, and he thinks Congress will be key to the effort to improve veterans’ care.

He said he’s also hopeful that he can build a strong working relationship with the incoming 1st District congressman, Roger Marshall.

Marshall, who unseated Rep. Tim Huelskamp in the August primary, is a physician, and Osterman said he thinks that will help with dealing with health issues at the VA.

Huelskamp and others have worked to make it easier for veterans in rural parts of the state to access medical care in their own communities rather than have to drive for hours to the VA hospital in Wichita.

While Huelskamp was a vociferous advocate on veterans issues, the cause is likely to survive his being voted out of office in the August primary, with other Kansas representatives and/or senators picking it up.

International trade

Another area where change could be coming is the export trade. Kansas largely depends on international trade agreements to sell agricultural products and aircraft in overseas markets.

On the campaign trail, Trump assailed trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement as bad for American workers. He said he will seek to renegotiate NAFTA and back the country out of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed 11-country pact with the Pacific Rim.

While the TPP is unpopular in the industrial Midwest, key states in Trump’s march to the presidency, Kansas agriculture has favored it. Farmers hope it would ease entry for U.S. products into Pacific markets, especially the lucrative market to sell beef in Japan, where prices are high because of Japanese trade barriers designed to protect the country’s domestic beef industry.

In addition, Kansas has invested heavily in the I-35 trade corridor linking U.S., Mexican and Canadian markets.

Canada is the state’s No. 1 trade partner, at $2.4 billion a year in exports, and Mexico is No. 2 at $1.8 billion, according to 2015 figures from the federal Department of Commerce.

Raw and processed foods accounted for $4.4 billion of Kansas’ $10.7 billion in overall exports, followed by transportation equipment, mostly aircraft, at $2.6 billion, the figures showed.

“Should we go in and talk about clawbacks and labor protections (in trade agreements)? Absolutely,” Ward said. “And Democrats have been advocating that since the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“But some of the comments by the president-elect are very alarming, particularly in a state that depends agriculturally on trade agreements to promote their industry,” Ward said.

Kansas U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, part of an agriculture advisory committee to Trump during the campaign, has said he thinks Trump will come to realize the potential damage to American agriculture if international trade dries up.

Rep. Whitmer said a Trump presidency will be better for the aircraft industry because Trump has his own private luxury jet and will therefore be more supportive of the industry than Obama, who criticized the private-jet set.

“One thing I’ve heard from someone very close to Trump is there’s a good chance he’s going to be here next year visiting the aircraft manufacturers,” Whitmer said.

Immigration

On immigration, it appears Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will have some influence with the Trump White House.

Kobach advised Trump on immigration policy during the campaign and serves on his transition team. Kobach’s name has also been floated as someone who may take on a permanent role in the Trump administration.

He has been a leading advocate for voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements that he says are needed to combat in-person voting fraud by illegal immigrants.

Kobach said after the election that he thinks Trump’s victory will help the state government defend its voting restrictions when the state appeals recent federal court decisions against its proof-of-citizenship requirement.

“Kansas has some issues before the courts, and Trump will be able to appoint the ninth Supreme Court justice,” Kobach said, pointing to the proof-of-citizenship cases and the state’s lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan.

Kobach called the president-elect’s promise to build a wall to keep Mexicans from illegally crossing the border “immensely important” to Trump’s victory, contending it was that issue that won over blue-collar workers. Trump also promised to deport illegal immigrants already on U.S. soil.

Rep. John Carmichael, D-Wichita, said he thinks Kobach may be in for a disappointment.

He said there are many examples of judges appointed by Republican or Democratic presidents who “leave their partisan politics behind” when they ascend to the federal court bench. He said most of Kobach’s losses on the proof-of-citizenship law he wrote for Kansas have come at the hands of judges appointed by Republicans.

As for mass deportation, Carmichael said there are really two groups at issue: urban undocumented workers who are deeply integrated into their community and often the parents of citizen children, and unskilled workers who staff the undesirable occupations in meat-packing and other agricultural pursuits in western Kansas.

“I certainly hope we don’t have ‘papers please’ checkpoints or door-to-door searches for undocumented workers,” he said. “That could cause disruption in urban areas.”

And in rural communities, “If we suddenly deported those (undocumented) folks, it would have a terrible effect on those (agricultural) communities and those businesses.”

Contributing: Bryan Lowry of The Eagle

This story was originally published November 12, 2016 at 5:16 PM with the headline "How will Trump presidency change Kansas?."