Freedom Line Blog

After years of rebuffing calls to participate in ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion, Pennsylvania Republican Governor Tom Corbett is changing his mind.

Sort of.

While the announcement comes as a bit of a surprise, it doesn’t appear to be a total loss for fiscal conservatives. (Others may disagree, of course.)

According to the terms of the agreement between Gov. Corbett’s office and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, Pennsylvania won’t simply be expanding its Medicaid program. Instead, it will use the extra dollars made available under ObamaCare to pay for (i.e. subsidize) private health insurance plans for newly eligible state Medicaid beneficiaries.

The agreement stipulates that Corbett’s alternative is being allowed as a five-year “demonstration project,” meaning that its future is not assured. Much will depend on how the project’s measurements are defined, if the reforms Corbett supports are to survive.

For now, Pennsylvania joins the ranks of Indiana, Arkansas and Iowa as states that are attempting to use ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion to decrease their uninsured population – without, of course, breaking the bank.

It’s hard to see how that will happen, but we now have at least four states offering themselves as very costly social science experiments. It should be interesting to see what the results will show.

Pennsylvania Republican Governor Tom Corbett may be wavering on his refusal to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare’s bait-and-switch funding scheme.

I don’t envy him.  He’s surrounded by states like Ohio and New Jersey, whose GOP governors opted to indulge the fantasy that they can accept the federal government’s promise of full funding at face value.

To his credit, Corbett isn’t allowing himself to act like there are no costs associated with agreeing to so-called “free” Medicaid expansion for the next three years.

Here’s some refreshing honesty from Corbett’s spokeswoman Christine Cronkright:

The Corbett administration has estimated that participating in the Medicaid expansion that would add 800,000 people to medical assistance would cost Pennsylvania $1 billion through 2014-15 and a total of $4.1 billion. Advocates maintain that the Medicaid expansion would pay the way for $43 billion in federal contributions, beginning with three years in which the federal government would pay 100 percent of the expansion.

“Regardless of the federal government’s claims, the presumption that they will cover 100 percent of the costs of full expansion is simply not true. Regardless of any other costs under the (Affordable Care Act) that we’d have to bear, there are still IT and staffing costs, costs for additional clients coming into the system that may have been eligible before, and costs for those we believe will drop employer-based coverage,” Cronkright said.

So it turns out “free” really means $1-4 billion.

The simple truth about ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion is that it establishes a one-way street toward greater federal intervention in every individual’s health care decisions. Democrats know this, and are using the “free” money trope to lure weak-willed Republicans into a federally-dominated system from which a state will not be able to extract itself.

GOP governors who agree to expansion and believe that they will have the political support to simply cut off access to Medicaid when the feds pull back funding are deluding themselves. Besides, what kind of leadership is it to support welfare expansion on the condition that someone else pays for it with their debt-laden credit card?

So far, Governor Corbett is standing firm in the face of tremendous opposition to fiscal sanity.  Let’s hope he continues.

Three days, two speeches, one important difference.

When Vice President Joe Biden spoke at the University of Pennsylvania on Wednesday, he said that opponents of the president’s jobs bill were okay that, as a result of blocking the bill, “murder will continue to rise, rape will continue to rise, all crimes will continue to rise.” Nary a peep was heard from the Occupy Philadelphia crowd.

By contrast, just the mere mention that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) would speak at Penn today brought on threats from Occupy Philadelphia to disrupt his speech.  Cantor rightly canceled his appearance at the last minute in order to avoid the kind of heckling for which liberal activists are notorious.

Biden argued that federal spending on state union members would somehow reduce murders and rapes.  Cantor was expected to speak on how to ease income inequalities.  If anyone needed more proof who these hooligans support and why, here it is.

Since at least the FDR era, the Democratic Party has served as an umbrella for a motley coalition of special interest groups that have only one thing in common: demanding action from government.  Most of the time, the competing priorities of the groups don’t come into direct conflict.  But when they do, it is a delight to sit back and watch each carve up the other.

Today’s example comes from the pages of the Wall Street Journal.  Apparently, businesses in the energy sector aren’t the only ones fighting the Obama Administration’s job-killing EPA regulations.  Labor unions like the Utility Workers Union of America and the United Mine Workers are demanding a ceasefire on cap-it-or-close-it regulations that could force companies to close 18% of the nation’s coal factories if they fail to comply with the EPA’s proposed climate change rules.

Unions recognize that without factories workers get fired.  Environmentalists don’t want to budge on what the Natural Resources Defense Council calls “the biggest public health achievement” of the Obama Administration.

Simple math is likely to break the stalemate.  Unions in coal states account for millions of campaign contributions and thousands of votes.  With Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin all flipping from Obama in 2008 to the Republicans in 2010, don’t count on the president to sacrifice his reelection chances on the altar of green jobs.

If he does, union voters – and their dollars – just might stay home in 2012.

Finally, some above-the-fray bipartisanship!  Tomorrow former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) will support Congressman Joe Sestak’s (D-PA) bid to enter the body Hagel once inhabited.  On the surface, the endorsement can be rationalized.  Both men served in the military (Hagel in the Army, Sestak in the Navy), and neither could be confused with a strong ideological commitment to forceful shows of American power.

However, there’s probably something more to Hagel’s otherwise ineffectual endorsement.  (He is virtually unknown to Pennsylvania voters, and his refusal to back Republican Pat Toomey won’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Hagel’s moderate record.)  With Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates (another middle-of-the-road-Republican) retiring at the end of next year, look for Hagel to get extra attention to replace him.

Here’s the take from Chris Cizilla of the Washington Post:

On the other hand, there could be genuine benefit for Hagel — albeit symbolic. Hagel is rightly understood as trying out for a Cabinet job and the more he can show a willingness to put party aside to do what he believes is the right thing, the more attractive he will be to President Obama and his inner circle.

It will be interesting to see if — and where — Hagel chooses to insert himself between now and Nov. 2 and what benefit, if any, he accrues in the eyes of the White House for those endorsements.

Funny how the “right thing” in this scenario is calculated to boost Hagel’s chances at landing one of the most important jobs in the United States government.  Hey, we can’t all be political martyrs – right, Pat Toomey?

So far, President Barack Obama is 0-for-everything when it comes to getting directly involved in any campaign other than his own.  In a three month span, he helped lose Democratic campaigns for governor in Virginia and New Jersey, and the special election for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat.

Now, it looks like he picked losers in two Democratic primaries.  Just when it seemed like the Joe Sestak pay-not-to-play offer couldn’t get weirder, the challenger in Colorado’s contested primary confirms that he too was approached about dropping out.  For those keeping score, Sestak beat Arlen Specter and Andrew Romanoff currently leads 60%-40% over the appointed incumbent Michael Bennet.  Whatever happened to the will of the people?

But what should we expect from a chief executive whose only “win” so far in office is a scandalously passed health care industry takeover that may go down as the most corrupt bargain ever brokered between a president and Congress.  The lesson here is that this president is as hapless at electoral horse trading as he is with legislative deal making.

How much longer ‘til 2012?

The May special election for the seat Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) vacated when he died in February is nearing its conclusion, setting itself up as a potential bellwether for the November 2010 midterm elections.  The main issue is spending.  Loyal readers will recall CFIF’s earlier commentary on the race; specifically the focus on Murtha’s legacy for creating jobs with pork barrel spending.

His former aide and Democratic hopeful Mark Critz continues to promise more of the same.  If elected, he’s promising to “keep important economic development initiatives moving forward.”  At some point, the district’s voters must realize that jobs funded by other peoples’ tax money aren’t free, or unlimited.  If Republican challenger Tim Burns can convince the people of Johnstown, PA, to vote for fiscal sanity, then Democrats nationwide are in for a world of hurt in November.

On May 18^th, voters in Pennsylvania’s 12^th congressional district will select someone other than the late John Murtha to represent them in Washington, D.C.  According to Newt Gingrich, it should be Republican businessman Tim Burns.  Burns and his Democratic opponent Mark Critz are subjects in a profile I wrote for CFIF here.  Though I discuss a different aspect of the campaign than Gingrich, I agree with his analysis that a center-left Democrat like Critz will find it nearly impossible to balance the need for far Left campaign cash with his district’s moderate-to-conservative leanings.  This will be a very bad year for Blue Dog Democrats.

Six years ago, then Rep. Pat Toomey (R-PA) angered the GOP establishment by running against incumbent Republican Senator Arlen Specter in the primary.  Toomey lost, in no small part to conservative GOP Senator Rick Santorum’s support for the very liberal Specter.  Since then, Specter won and switched parties, Santorum was defeated by Democrat Bob Casey, Jr., and Toomey ran the Club for Growth.

Now, Toomey is the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee to knock off Specter in this year’s general election while Santorum nurses plans for a presidential run in 2012.  With Toomey outpolling Specter and Santorum counting on conservatives like Toomey to make him electorally viable, it’s nice to see a limited government politician winding up in the driver’s seat.