Monday, I lamented our deeply-indebted federal government’s policy towards the states: Bribery.
It busily borrows more and more money to entice our more fiscally sound state governments into dramatically expanding Medicaid spending to ever less sustainable levels. I also noted that several Republican Governors who were long opposed to Obamacare are now taking the bribes.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker isn’t one of them, but he appeared on Fox News Sunday to speak with host Chris Wallace, who said:
“As you well know, seven Republican governors have agreed to the expansion of [Medicaid] to 133 percent of the poverty [line] … And they say they’re doing it because of, if you will, free money.… [C]ritics say that your decision is, one, going to cost your state millions of dollars and, two, going to mean a lot of people in Wisconsin are uninsured.”
“In our case,” explained Walker, “we actually reduced the number of uninsured, we reduced the number of people on Medicaid and we actually saved a little bit of money.”
Wallace then asked if he feared Congress wasn’t going to live up to its end of the bargain.
“No doubt about it,” Walker responded. “Just for my cost to continue Medicaid in the state of Wisconsin, without any expansion, it cost me $644 million more in this budget. Thirty-nine percent of that is because the federal government under the Affordable Care Act and other provisions is pulling back on their previous commitments. That’s today. That’s without the expansion.… If Congress can’t fulfill the commitments they’ve made, I’m concerned about where they’re going to be in the future.”
Wallace then asked Governor Markell (D‑Delaware), “why is it that he doesn’t trust Washington and you do?”
That question went unanswered.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.