The General Assembly came back into session Tuesday, January 14th with the desire to override Governor Cooper's veto of the State Budget so teachers can get their pay raises and local municipalities can receive the extra funding that they were granted. The republican control of the Senate needed two extra votes from democratic Senators to fulfill the override. Sen. Clark (Cumberland/Hoke), Sen. Davis (Greene/Pitt), & Sen. Fitch ( Edgecombe/Halifax) were democratic Senators who did not have any opposition for the upcoming primary elections and have constituents in municipalities who would benefit from the state budget funding awarded to their communities. These Senators were in discussion with the republican leadership on voting for the veto override but when the bell rung, they stood by Gov. Cooper.
This all comes down to (VP hopeful) Gov. Cooper holding up all other NC priorities for Medicaid expansion. There is republican interest in negotiating an expansion of Medicaid ( HB655, Rep Lambeth (R), NC Health Care for Working Families). But the current Medicaid system in our state is broken, with no control of cost increases. This needs to be fixed before expanding. In 2015, the General Assembly passed legislation to modernize and privatize Medicaid administration moving provider reimbursement to result based versus fee for service and have insurance companies COMPETE on the best way to administer the plan which saves tax dollars. The current veto of the state budget prevented the 2019-20 funding for the Medicaid enhancements that were supposed to take affect Jan 1, 2020. The fix to Medicaid has now been put off till at least 2021. Millions and Millions of dollars were wasted and jobs lost due to the democratic hold on the budget. The Democratic party wants to expand a broken system. Pass the budget, fix the system and negotiate the expansion.