Medicaid expansion supporters fail in effort to block Kansas budget

A push by Kansas lawmakers to force a vote on Medicaid expansion collapsed Saturday after a bipartisan coalition faltered and failed to block the state budget from advancing.

The House voted 79-45 to approve the $7.7 billion budget and send it to the Senate – paving the way for the annual legislative session to end.

The vote ended a two-day standoff over expansion, a top priority for Gov. Laura Kelly.

Expansion supporters had hoped to pressure Senate Republican leaders to allow a debate by blocking the budget in the House. They successfully stopped two budget proposals, but not a third.

The spending blueprint is the only bill lawmakers are required to pass, and that gave pro-expansion lawmakers a powerful piece of leverage.

But Republicans who had previously voted to hold up the budget abandoned the effort during a vote that lasted more than two hours.

Rep. Tom Cox, R-Shawnee, had originally supported the budget blockade in an effort to advance expansion.

“It was the final option. It’s not the option anyone wanted but we came together and said, ‘Is this issue important enough?’” Cox said.

But in the end, Cox, like several other Republicans, voted to approve the budget.

“I switched to a YES since our efforts failed & I want to support this good budget,” he tweeted.

Democrats continued to oppose the budget.

“We have been studying this issue for over five years,” House Minority Leader Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita, said. “Now is the time to debate and vote on KanCare expansion.”

When voting began, the count was 57 in favor and 63 against. Over the course of two hours, lawmakers switched their votes and others who had been missing showed up.

As the vote appeared to slip away from expansion supporters, someone played Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down.” At the end, a flood of Republicans switched their votes as it became clear the bill would pass.

“It’s a shame this coalition didn’t hold today,” Rep. Rui Xu, D-Westwood, said.

Kelly’s administration on Saturday condemned the new budget proposal over concerns it would hamper improvements to Kansas’ struggling prisons.

It would provide nearly $27 million more for the Kansas Department of Corrections, but requires the agency to seek approval from the State Finance Council, where Republicans hold a majority, in order to spend most of the money.

“I guess I’m just really frustrated. If this scenario gets put into place, I have no idea when those resources become available to me,” Interim Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz told reporters. “And our problem is right now. It’s not next fiscal year, it’s not a year down the road.”

Kansas prisons have been plagued by short staffing for years. The shortage is so severe at El Dorado Correctional Facility that Kelly declared a state of emergency earlier this year, paving the way for mandatory overtime for workers there.

Rep. Troy Waymaster, a Bunker Hill Republican and chairman of the House budget committee, said lawmakers are well aware of the problems facing Kansas prisons, but added the Legislature “would just like to be able to just have some type of oversight about exactly how we handle the issues with corrections.”

Legislative leaders spent a rare Saturday session mostly meeting behind closed doors while rank-and-file members milled around. Kelly was visible, talking to lawmakers outside the House and Senate chambers.

Before the House vote, Kelly, in a brief interview, called the situation “to be expected” and normal for this time of the year. She said she was continuing to work to pass Medicaid expansion this session.

“Not only do a vast majority of Kansans want it, a significant majority of senators want it,” Kelly said.

The House effectively overruled Republican leaders earlier this year to pass a Medicaid expansion bill but the Senate hadn’t touched it.

Expansion supporters have been trying for years to get the program into law. The Legislature approved it in 2017, but then-Gov. Sam Brownback vetoed it.

More than 100,000 Kansans could have received health coverage under the proposal. But critics said the costs could prove unaffordable.

The federal government would pay 90 percent of the costs, while the state would pay the remaining 10 percent – an amount estimated at between $34 million and $47 million a year.

Senators tried this week to pass a procedural motion to move expansion closer to a debate. The motion failed, but still attracted 23 votes – more than the 21 needed to pass legislation. That encouraged expansion supporters in the House to block the budget in hopes that Senate Republican leaders will allow a vote.

This story was originally published May 4, 2019 at 3:33 PM.