Gov. Branstad opposes Medicaid expansion

Over the weekend I was giving some thought to how the Republicans have once more maneuvered Democrats into a situation where all but one option are pretty bad – should Democrats compromise to any meaningful degree on the Medicaid bill that the Iowa House passed then Medicaid itself is compromised.

Then it hit me – there was never meant to be any serious attempt to upgrade Medicaid in Iowa. Especially a Medicaid which would to some degree advance the Affordable Care Act which in turn would supposedly make Obama look good. If you haven’t paid attention for the past 4.5 years, the lone policy that the national Republican Party has had is to make the Obama administration unable to function. It makes no difference what the policy is, the lone Republican policy has been to obstruct passage of legislation or implementation of any legislation.

Up until now, enforcing the Republican policy to make Obama look bad has fallen on national Republicans – mostly Senate and House members and bureaucrats who have gone slow on enforcement. But when Chief Justice Roberts made his strange decision last year on the Affordable Care Act, he chose – totally re-interpretting the Act itself – that the Medicaid Expansion portion be left to states to decide how to implement. Thus a new group of Republicans were kicked into play who could try to put the hurt on an Obama aministration.

Thus after some mental wrangling, various Republican governors chose to address this decision in various ways. Some chose to accept Medicaid Expansion as given. Some chose to rewrite the terms, some chose to pass it to the legislature to deal with and some took a multiple approach. In Iowa, Gov. Branstad chose to do a rewrite and then let the legislature choose. This would do many things politically for him in playing up to ALEC and the money in the Republican Party:

1) It made Branstad look like he stood up to the horrible Obama
2) by creating anything it made him look like he actually cared
3) his staff could create a situation where it looked like Branstad wanted Medicaid, but Democrats were the obstacles in getting poor people health care.

And so Branstad and his staff went on to create one of the most odious bills ever to be sent to an Iowa legislature. And Republicans, being the totally ideologically driven party that allows no dissent lest they be primaried, passed the Branstad bill even though some of their leaders admitted to the stench. A stench that can be smelled across the state, even overpowering the pig manure Iowa is usually so famous for.

Now the Medicaid Expansion bill is in conference committee, the Senate having passed the Obama version, the House having passed the Branstad version. There are few similarities between the two. Since this is actually a national issue, I would expect Iowa Republicans to follow the lead of their national colleagues and refuse to compromise at all. Thus insisting that the odious version become the Medicaid bill for Iowa and thus helping the national party’s single policy objective of making Obama look bad.

So I look either for the conference committee to to be unable to compromise with Republicans accusing Democrats with refusing compromise. Based on the national Republican party’s general refusal to ever move positions and then claim it is the Democrats fault I expect this to be very likely.  Another scenario is that a compromise is reached mostly based on the odious Branstad bill that causes Democrats to vote it down once again. A third possibility is a compromise based mostly on the ACA version, with Republicans voting it down.

In any scenario, there is a quite good chance that either a bill will not be passed or that Branstad will veto. In either case the end result will be what I believe Branstad was shooting for in the very beginning and that is to simply stop Medicaid in Iowa. Just saying so would have been too costly politically. To go through this whole scenario allows Branstad to stand above the fray looking like the reasonable one while still achieving his real goal. I am really getting jaded about Republicans and their motives anymore.