Gov. Paul LePage (R-ME) just doesn't know when to quit. Or when he's beat. Back in November, the state's voters finally were able to to pass a Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act that he couldn't veto, as he had with numerous legislative efforts. But LePage has promised to fight the will of the voters by basically refusing to approve any funding mechanism and setting up a number of roadblocks.
In a Dec. 11 letter to legislative leaders, LePage laid out a number of conditions, including that there be no tax increases, that money from the budget stabilization fund is not tapped, that the funding mechanism be ongoing, and that waitlists for services for elderly and disabled people be eliminated before state government pays to expand Medicaid eligibility.
LePage also wrote that the money appropriated by the Legislature for Medicaid expansion must be based on the Department of Health and Human Services estimates of the state’s share of the cost, not on what the Office of Fiscal and Program Review estimated.
Trump's HHS has come up with a much, much larger price tag for the state's participation than the state's fiscal review office, which is why LePage is insisting on that condition. It's the state review figures that the proponents of the ballot measure relied upon and the legislature is using going forward. If LePage doesn't like that, Democratic Assistant House Majority Leader Jared Golden is basically saying, he can lump it.
[Golden] says Democrats don’t intend to even engage in a funding debate this year because the Legislature's fiscal office has already determined there is enough funding in the Medicaid program to last through May of 2019.
"It's important that every time the governor talks about 'the Legislature hasn't put forward any funding so I'm not going to do my job,' that the people recognize he's simply making excuses," Golden said Wednesday.
Furthermore, Golden says, if LePage doesn't move forward with the expansion they'll see him in court. "The organizations that banded together to support Question 2 feel like they have a bullet-proof legal argument," he said. It's LePage's last year in office, and he's clearly a lame duck fighting against a very popular initiative. He might not find a lot of takers among Republican legislators in helping him conduct this battle.