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GOP leaders stand strong against Walker's Medicaid expansion fiat

While the left revs up its propaganda machine to decry the Legislative Council's correct -- sublimely correct -- decision to sue the pants off Gov. Bill Walker for embracing Barack Obama's penchant for ignoring constitutional strictures and playing overlord, the rest of us should be thanking our lucky stars.

Perhaps the folks in black robes can pound a stake into the heart of Walker's misbegotten drive to bankrupt Alaska by expanding Medicaid, a program that eventually will cost billions, just as the state wades through its cash reserves and teeters above a very deep fiscal abyss -- although that is not what they will be asked to do.

They will be asked to decide whether Walker tap-danced on the constitution in announcing he would take -- without even a by-your-leave to the Legislature -- $146.6 million in federal funds on Sept. 1 to expand Alaska's gold-plated, $1.5 billion-a-year Medicaid program that covers about 130,000 Alaskans. He unilaterally would add perhaps 40,000 -- and likely more -- single, able-bodied adults, after lawmakers awash in red ink declined to act.

The Legislature's Republican majority wants an injunction to derail his accepting the money and tapping the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority for $1.6 million to cover administrative costs.

"We as the Legislature have the authority to pass laws and set state policy, and we feel that this time the Legislature has been left out of that policymaking decision, and out of that process…," said House Speaker Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski.

"This is not a policy issue — we're not discussing whether we should or shouldn't expand Medicaid," said Senate President Kevin Meyer, R-Anchorage. "This is a question of authority and process and our constitution."

At the heart of the legal fracas is another in a lengthy string of U.S. Supreme Court decisions nobody really understands because they were written by lawyers.

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When our masters in Congress cobbled up "Obamacare," they dictated states must expand Medicaid for low-income Americans. If not, they warned, the federal government would cut off all Medicaid payments. The high court in 2012 struck down the blackmail as unconstitutional.

The question is: Did the court rule on expansion or the threat to withhold Medicaid money? One view is that expansion is still required, but the feds cannot enforce it. An opposing interpretation is that it is not required, and any additions are new and optional.

The Legislature's majority believes expansion is not mandatory and the group Walker proposes to insure is a new, "optional" group requiring, under state law, legislative approval. Walker sees the group's inclusion as required under "Obamacare," part of the existing Medicaid program and not requiring legislative approval.

A House-Senate committee voted 10-1 last week -- with one Democrat voting with Republicans and one against -- to haul Walker into court.

Some in the Legislature -- and this bodes ill -- are viewing as worrisome Walker's predilection to do as he pleases. They question whether Medicaid expansion is just a harbinger. They wonder at the political capital he is burning, with huge revenue fights on the horizon. And there is his troubling and inexplicable push for 51 percent control of the proposed $65 billion Alaska LNG megaproject, his upscaling of the Alaska Stand Alone Pipeline and other initiatives. They liken him to a bull in a china shop and wonder whether he understands politics, the Legislature or the constitution. The lawsuit, they believe, is entirely necessary.

This much is certain: Walker's drive to foist Medicaid expansion on Alaska -- a campaign promise to snare Democrat votes -- is wrong-headed.

He says it will save money, boost the economy, rescue battered hospitals and bring 4,000 new jobs. There is ample evidence to the contrary. States have found expansion enrollment -- and the attendant, devastating costs -- wildly exceeding rosy official projections. What will Medicaid expansion eventually cost Alaska in education and other funding?

Then, there is the question of whether Alaska can trust the federal government -- already $18 trillion in debt -- to keep its word to pay the full cost next year and scale back to 90 percent of such an expansion by 2020. What then? Obama in 2011 proposed dumping $100 billion in federal funding for Medicaid expansion, leaving it to the states.

The expansion is fiscally irresponsible and accepting federal money on his own for it questionable, but Walker sees legislative reluctance as merely political.

"I cannot understand, I cannot fathom to understand why suing to take away health care coverage of working Alaskans is a partisan issue," he said after the announcement. "I don't have a clue as to why they've done that."

That may, indeed, be the real problem.

Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com, a division of Porcaro Communications.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, e-mail commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com

Paul Jenkins

Paul Jenkins is a former Associated Press reporter, managing editor of the Anchorage Times, an editor of the Voice of the Times and former editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.

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