writes Stephen F. Hayes<\/a> at The Weekly Standard. \u201cThe federal government promises to fully fund Medicaid expansion for three years, after which the federal dollars are phased out and states will be responsible for paying for the expanded program themselves.\u201d<\/p>\nThose governors include John Kasich of Ohio and Chris Christie of New Jersey. Both argue they made the best of a bad policy situation. Former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas could also be added to the mix, since he has recently distanced himself from Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan\u2019s entitlement reform package ahead of an anticipated presidential bid.<\/p>\n
After three years of party unity \u2013 broadly speaking \u2013 on entitlement reform, Republican leaders seem to be charting different paths on how to tackle the issue. This can and should be a healthy exercise in deliberation and persuasion, precisely the kind of policy-centric debate so necessary in the primaries.<\/p>\n
That is, if the conversation stays on topic. Kasich, for example, has already shown a willingness to demonize critics instead of responding with a better argument. To wit, when health policy expert Avik Roy asked Kasich how he could be against ObamaCare\u2019s \u201ctop-down government\u201d but support Medicaid\u2019s version of the same, Kasich retorted, \u201cMaybe you think we should put them [the poor] in prison. I don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hillary Clinton\u2019s attack machine couldn\u2019t have said it better. For the good of the conservative movement, Kasich and the rest of the presumptive GOP presidential field should.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recent statements by likely GOP presidential candidates indicate the answer may be no. \u201cRepublican governors across the country, including several conservatives, couldn\u2019t resist the siren song of federal dollars and chose to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare,\u201d writes Stephen F. Hayes at The Weekly Standard. \u201cThe federal government promises to fully fund Medicaid expansion for three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3887,1034,3308,2698,232,201,35],"class_list":["post-22768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-3887","tag-chris-christie","tag-health","tag-john-kasich","tag-medicaid","tag-mike-huckabee","tag-obamacare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22768"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22772,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22768\/revisions\/22772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}