The General Assembly session is scheduled to adjourn on Saturday, March 8, 2014, and it is not clear that we will have a budget by that date. The stumbling block continues to be Medicaid expansion. Many of us have advocated for a budget that includes closing the coverage gap for … [Read more...]
General Assembly 2014
The Budget, Medicaid Expansion, and my Town Hall Meeting
The House and Senate budgets were debated and ultimately passed yesterday. Budgets are about choices, and the budget that passed the House reflected a choice that Republicans made to reject the expansion of Medicaid coverage to over 275,000 Virginians. In a last minute procedural … [Read more...]
Medicaid Expansion Speech (Feb 14, 2014)
Crossover
We are now at the midpoint of the General Assembly session, a time that we call “crossover,” aptly named for the process by which bills passed in one house “crossover” to the other body. The hours are long and the debates frequently heated as many controversial bills get … [Read more...]
House Loss is Senate Gain
The big news last week was the transfer of power in the Senate. The election of Lynwood Lewis as the 20th Democratic member of the Senate, and with Democrat Ralph Northam in the tie-breaking role of Lt. Governor, Democrats assumed control and promptly moved to reconstitute … [Read more...]