Medicaid expansion supporters block Kansas budget to pressure Republican leaders

Kansas lawmakers blocked a $7.7 billion state budget bill Friday to pressure Republican leaders into advancing Medicaid expansion.

The House voted 63-61 to send the budget proposal back for more negotiation in the most dramatic action expansion supporters have taken this year.

Late Friday, the House rejected a second budget package, 42-81. The new package was unpopular with lawmakers because it was smaller than the first budget bill and would have stopped Kansas from collecting more than $200 million in health-related federal funding.

More than 100,000 Kansans could receive health coverage if the state expands Medicaid, though critics fear the costs would ultimately prove unaffordable.

Lawmakers approved reopening budget negotiations with the minimum number of votes required. The decision ground the Legislature to a halt. As Friday evening began, Republicans were seeking to cut spending from the budget bill.

“This is where the real arm twisting begins,” said Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, D-Wichita.

Legislators are restless to get the session over with, she said. With such a tight split in the House, it might not take much to get someone to flip.

“Right now it looks like the last day of school,” Faust-Goudeau said. “But we’ve got to put people over politics and get this figured out.”

As currently written, the budget would add millions to help the state’s troubled prison system. It also includes additional funding to strengthen the child welfare system, which has been rocked by child deaths and embarrassing failures.

And it would increase pay for state employees.

The bill would leave Kansas with a surplus of about $550 million next year, according to projections.

Republicans warned before the House vote that the budget won’t look the same when it returned to the floor.

“This one here, I guarantee, will change again,” House Majority Leader Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita, said.

When the budget emerged again from negotiations, it included $10 million less for higher education. Republicans also removed about $187,000 to help reduce staff turnover at Larned State Hospital, among other changes.

But Democrats and some Republicans chafed at how Republican leaders had trimmed the size of the budget package after expansion supporters voted to block the budget.

“We don’t allow bullying” in our schools, colleges and prisons, Rep. Larry Hibbard, R-Toronto, said. “And we shouldn’t be allowing it here.”

The state Republican Party blamed Democrats for the budget holdup. In a blistering statement, Kansas Republican Party secretary Emily Wellman accused Democrats of voting to close schools and against the Department for Children and Families receiving needed resources.

The statement made no mention of the Republicans who also voted to block the budget.

For their part, several Democrats praised the budget, but emphasized the need for expansion.

“KanCare expansion is a major issue in this state. We’ve been studying it for the last five years,” House Minority Leader Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita, said.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has made expansion a top priority since taking office. She won a partial victory earlier this year when the House approved expansion. But Senate Republican leaders haven’t brought the bill up for a vote.

The chances of approving the program this year had appeared to fade in recent days. Senators tried and failed Wednesday to move expansion closer to a vote.

With the final days of session slipping away, expansion supporters — Democrats and some Republicans — banded together to hit pause on the budget, the only bill the Legislature is constitutionally required to pass.

“Hopefully this creates a window for them to continue pushing. If we can continue pushing, there’s several options,” Rep. Brett Parker, D-Overland Park, said.

Those options could include passing additional expansion legislation or including expansion in the budget plan.

Expansion opponents appeared unmoved.

“It doesn’t change my thinking,” Sen Rob Olson, R-Olathe, said.

If Kansas increased eligibility in Medicaid, which provides health coverage to low-income individuals and individuals with disabilities, the federal government would pay for 90 percent of the cost. That would extend coverage to people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. For a family of four, that’s $35,535 a year.

The state’s share of the cost of expansion has been estimated at somewhere between $34 million and $47 million a year.

“Our friends, families and neighbors need Medicaid expansion. Not only is it sound policy, it is the right thing to do,” Kelly said in a column Friday urging readers to contact Senate Republican leaders and demand an expansion vote.

The House and Senate adjourned late Friday night and planned to resume their work Saturday morning.

“That’s our number one goal. We have to pass a budget,” House Speaker Ron Ryckman, R-Olathe, said.

The votes blocking the budget came hours after demonstrators dumped thousands of fliers targeting senators over expansion. The fliers rained down like confetti through the Capitol rotunda.

This story was originally published May 3, 2019 at 3:47 PM.