House and Senate Pass Historic Budget with Medicaid Expansion

May 30, 2018 by David Toscano

After almost two months of waiting, the General Assembly has passed a historic budget that expands access to Medicaid for more than 300,000 Virginians. It took a five-year fight in Richmond to get this done, and the battle could not have been won without the efforts of so many Virginians who pushed, especially at the ballot box, for this initiative.

This budget is probably the best I have seen in my twelve years in the General Assembly.

Republican leadership in the Virginia Senate attempted to hold the budget hostage over this issue. Ultimately, they were foiled by members of their own caucus like Emmett Hanger and Frank Wagner, who were willing to expand Medicaid not simply because of human benefits, but because of how the additional federal dollars would help with our state budget. In fact, Virginia’s Medicaid has been expanding for years, but in the most fiscally irresponsible manner. Under the present program, the federal government matches our spending on a one-to-one basis. For every dollar we spend, they match it with a dollar. Under Medicaid Expansion, the federal government will pay over ninety percent of the costs of the new enrollees. This is a much better financial deal for the Commonwealth. Republicans also recognize that the Affordable Care Act is not likely to be repealed, so they concluded it would be better for us to bring billions of tax dollars that Virginians pay to Washington back to the Commonwealth to help Virginians with health insurance and to shore up our budget. [Read more…]

Senate Goes To Richmond, But No Budget Vote

May 23, 2018 by David Toscano

I was planning to be driving to Richmond this morning for the next House floor session to pass a two-year budget for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Instead, I am writing about what didn’t happen yesterday in the Senate. For at least another week, Virginia will remain without a budget.

This impasse reminds me of my first session in 2006 when Republicans in the House and Senate deadlocked on a budget until June 28, the very last minute before the end of the fiscal year. That year, the prospects of a government shutdown were real; now, we have a different dynamic. The 2019-2020 budget legislation has been bottled up by the Senate’s Republican leadership, which is preventing it from getting to the Senate floor.

Here are critical things that you need to know: [Read more…]

General Assembly Update: A Tale of Two Committees

May 10, 2018 by David Toscano

The Parkland shootings vividly reignited the gun safety debate all over America, including our Virginia House of Delegates. Republican and Democratic delegates, however, responded quite differently. The Republican leadership decided their focus should be narrow, and, through the Speaker, created the House Select Committee on School Safety, a bipartisan 22-member group to which I was appointed. [Read more…]

House Passes Budget with Medicaid Expansion — Governor’s Vetoes Sustained

April 20, 2018 by David Toscano

We returned to the special session in Richmond on Tuesday, April 17, 2018, to debate the House Budget. The House budget includes Medicaid Expansion, which accesses federal dollars that are incorporated into our budget so that we can fund critical needs of the Commonwealth while insuring some 400,000 Virginians who do not yet have coverage. The House budget passed with a strong bipartisan majority. It is time to pass Medicaid Expansion in Virginia. [Read more…]

Back to Richmond — No Medicaid Expansion Yet

April 11, 2018 by David Toscano

Since the House and Senate could not agree on a budget during the regular General Assembly Session, which adjourned in March, the Governor has called us back for a Special Session to get it done. The Special Session begins April 11, 2018, but no action will occur immediately on the budget. The new budget bill introduced by Governor Northam will have to go through the regular committee process just like the previous one. The House Appropriations Committee will begin its work quickly, and so it’s entirely possible that a House budget will be ready in time for floor debate on Tuesday, April 17 – but this could change depending on scheduling. We expect that the House budget will include Medicaid expansion and the hospital provider assessment, which allows us to expand without use of additional state dollars, much like it did in the regular Session, but we are not sure yet what will be included in the Senate’s budget. Because the Senate initially rejected Medicaid expansion and the provider assessment, its budget cut more than $400 million from education and other services that would have been funded by accepting the federal Medicaid dollars. While there has been some recent media coverage suggesting that Medicaid expansion will be adopted by the Senate, nothing is assured until the green lights go up on the vote board, and there will need to be considerable negotiations before a final budget compromise is reached. The momentum is positive, but Senate Republican leadership is now the main barrier, and we need to keep advocating for expansion. More than 7,000 citizens in our area would benefit from Medicaid expansion and it would certainly help our local hospitals by recapturing some of the money that would otherwise be spent on indigent care. You can watch the online live stream of the special session here. [Read more…]

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