I've long since held that the reason the GOP pulled out all the financial and influential stops to get fat cat lobbyist and former RNC Chair Haley Barbour into the Governor's office in podunk Missisippi was to use this, among the poorest of the states, as a petri dish environment in which to test run plans before launching national initiatives.
The same strategy was applied, successfully, to the culture war issues over the last 25 years. Under the lockstep Legislative branch under Bush, the experimental phase goes policy.....
Today, the
Sun-Herald runs this bit about Haley's plan to raid the health-care trust fund set up by the state's tobacco lawsuit windfall. Barbour aims to destroy two initiatives in one fell swoop:
Gov. Haley Barbour says lawmakers should solve Medicaid's deficit problem this week and he supports using the state's tobacco trust fund to cover the $268 million shortfall.
"There's one thing that's urgent now. We need to get this covered this week," Barbour said Tuesday during an interview in his office. "There's only one source which to fund it. That's the health care trust fund."[...]
[...]State law requires Barbour to make cuts to an agency when its spending is 12 percent over budget. But Barbour said Tuesday that he could not have made enough cuts to Medicaid to bring it into compliance with state law because of the size of the deficit.
"If we eliminate every single optional service provided by Medicaid, we would not be able to get it in compliance with the law," Barbour said.
Barbour said aside from the trust fund, the only other option would be to increase the state sales tax from 7 percent to 11 percent, a move he described as "preposterous."[...]
[...]Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck, who presides over the Senate, has not appointed Senate negotiators to begin work on a compromise with the House for a Medicaid deficit appropriation bill.
Tuck said she's not going to name the negotiators until the House considers tapping into the health care trust fund.
Some lawmakers may be reluctant to use the trust fund because of a warning given to them earlier this session by State Treasurer Tate Reeves.
Reeves said Mississippi's credit rating could be weakened if lawmakers continue to dip into the state's reserve funds. He said a lower rating would make it more expensive for the state to borrow money.
And to destroy the state's shoddy credit rating in the process.
Barbour has been working toward a textbook Starve the Beast plan to dismantle health care for Mississippi's most vulnerable. As goes the South......
running out for a bit. will add to this or post a new diary on the subject in a bit