The last ditch

Jeff Schapiro’s latest column takes a look at the difficulties Terry McAuliffe is facing in his freshman year as Governor. They are many, and not entirely unique to the current occupant of the Executive Mansion. But when it comes to the issue of Medicaid expansion, Jeff comes close to addressing a key item in the current stalemate that has little to do with a tyro governor:

As governor, McAuliffe is elected by a vote of the entire state. And while his support is strongest in the urban-suburban crescent, he won votes across Virginia. GOP delegates are elected in made-to-order districts that maximize the influence of conservative activists who do not reflect Virginia as a whole.

So he is accountable to almost everyone. Comparatively speaking, they’re accountable to almost no one — no one, except tea partiers and Libertarians who could topple incumbents through primary challenges from the right.

That last bit is what drives the GOP side of the debate. Their stand, despite its appeals to fiscal rectitude, careful study and whatnot, is actually rooted in fear.

It’s that simple.

A year ago, General Assembly Republicans told elements of the base who opposed the tax hikes for roads to go pound sand. It ended up costing two long-term House Republicans their seats. While that may seem trivial in a caucus with over 60 members, the shock value cannot be underestimated.

Buckle on Medicaid, and you, Mr. Incumbent, could be asking Joe May for resume advice come 2015.

I’ve written that the Democrats have no “Plan B” for getting out of the current budget/Medicaid mess. Jeff floats the possibility, which has been the object of whispers for some months now, that the Governor will “attempt the dramatic: a health care fix by executive fiat that could toss the whole mess to the Virginia Supreme Court.”

Maybe. In some ways, it would be the best option for the GOP as it would take the burden off of them to stand steely eyed on the budget and shift all the risk onto McAuliffe and the Democrats.

Mr. McAuliffe could do what Jeff suggests. Even some Republicans will admit, privately, that the commission they created to weigh Medicaid reforms — the MIRC — has enough holes in it for McAuliffe to push through whatever sort of expansion he wants. That would leave Republicans having to argue with him in court — making it a game of chase.

The question is whether General Assembly Democrats would be willing to follow McAuliffe’s lead. They may not, as McAuliffe would be painted, almost immediately, as having done a full Obama on expansion, using his pen to trump the law, trashing process, etc. Republicans, too, face peril, as they would be arguing, in effect, for snatching health care from the poor. Those optics are less than good, bordering on horrible.

But let’s revist Jeff’s chronology. Before McAuliffe goes his own way, he blinks a little:

Maybe, on health care, he keeps groping for common ground with the House, giving up at the last-minute to keep Virginia from going over the fiscal cliff…

Someone will blink, but that does not have to mean McAuliffe would then dash ahead with expansion.

A rumor circulating in Capitol Square is that Republicans are fairly sure McAuliffe is willing to shut the works down. Republicans are, or say they are, prepared to do the same. All to win the point over Medicaid.

It’s easy to say and believe such things in April, when the budget deadline is still so far away. But will the same things be said and believed come June? Unlikely. Recent history tells us we can expect more to be said about how a shutdown would affect Virginia’s coveted AAA bond rating. But we’ve teetered on the edge of this precipice before, during the first year of the Kaine administration. At the time, Moody’s, the bond rating house that blessed, and advocated for, Mark Warner’s 2004 sales tax hike sat on the sidelines, saying that:

“the current situation adds a small degree of uncertainty, although it is expected that the budget situation will be resolved well before the first interest payment on the bonds is due in November 2006.”

So a shutdown, while politically stupid, and possibly suicidal, shouldn’t concern Wall Street. Unless it drags on until the interest payments are due.

Which is why, very quietly, both sides are revisiting the last time Virginia stared into the budgetary void to see what they can do to keep the state limping along in the absence of an official budget.

But long before then, the sides will reach some sort of deal. Paul Goldman and I wrote that McAuliffe can get out of this jam right now by some artful re-working of what he considers a win. No expansion? No problem — we’ve put this on the radar and prodded that zombie-like MIRC into actually doing something worthwhile.

It’s hardly perfect. But he’s a master salesman — let him sell it to his base.

As for the GOP…they have no fallback position. It’s either stick together now, or face the political repercussion next year.

They like their jobs far too much to give in.

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