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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > April > 30
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Martin Gottlieb: Specter’s problems show limits for Ohio Republicans, too
When Arlen Specter announced Tuesday that he was leaving the Republican Party, an e-mail labeled “Good Riddance” was sent out by the National Republican Congressional Committee (whose job is to elect Republicans to the House of Representatives).
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Republican Party, Michael Steele, referred to the dearly departed’s voting record as “left-wing.”
These reactions must win the attention of other Republicans who don’t always toe the party line.
If Specter is a left-winger, where does that leave Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, the Republicans from Maine who bolt from the party more often?
How many other good-riddances do the party officials have in them?
The next senatorial name that comes up is George Voinovich. This is true for a couple of reasons.
One is that, as you travel from Maine down into the heart of the country, the first Republican senator you come to is now Voinovich, except for Judd Gregg, the fellow from New Hampshire who accepted a nomination to the Obama Cabinet before he rejected it. (Like Voinovich, he is retiring.)
The North is where senatorial independence from the line of the Southern-based party is most likely to raise its head, precisely because life is so difficult for Republicans up here.
Another reason Voinovich’s name must come up is that he was the last Republican senator to leave the room in negotiations over the stimulus. His was the vote the Democrats came closest to getting, but lost.
That was the crucial issue in the Specter story. He voted for the stimulus, then concluded that the vote probably precluded his renomination.
On the day after Specter flipped parties, The New York Times ran a chart showing which senators have most often voted differently than their party’s majority this year. Snowe and Collins were the highest-ranking Republicans. Specter was next.
Voinovich was next. He voted with the party only 68 percent of the time, compared to Specter’s 65 percent.
He was, for example, one of only nine Republicans voting to confirm Kathleen Sebelius as secretary of Health and Human Services. That was fundamentally a vote against playing partisan games and against bowing to the warrior conservatives in the party.
He was also one of six Republicans (the four mentioned above, plus Utah’s Orrin Hatch and Indiana’s Richard Lugar) to vote for congressional representation for the District of Columbia.
Most typically, Voinovich is there for the Republicans on the big ones. But being there only “typically” is about one step away from being a “left-winger” in some eyes.
Over the years, Voinovich’s posture on taxes, on Iraq and a few other issues has resulted in the frequent charge from the Wall Street Journal editorial page and assorted Rush Limbaugh Republicans that he is a RINO (Republican in name only).
Most congressional Republicans won’t risk being unpopular with the Limbaugh people these days.
When Voinovich announced that he will not seek re-election, Sen. John Cornyn, of Texas, who is heading the effort to elect Republican senators, said that, while he was disappointed, he sees an opportunity to put forth “new, energetic, fresh-faced candidates who are articulators of the Republican message, and I like our chances.”
Maybe that wasn’t exactly a slap at Voinovich, but the truth is that articulating the Republican message isn’t the activity one associates with Voinovich. He’s more into the nuts and bolts of real-life governance than ideology.
So it’s interesting to contemplate what would have happened if Voinovich had supported the stimulus and had decided to seek re-election.
Ohio has a lot in common with Pennsylvania, politically speaking. Both are urban states where the Democrats are ascendant now, but not always.
Ohio might be considered more conservative than Pennsylvania, not having gone consistently for Democrats in presidential elections lately.
But, on the other hand, Ohio Republicans at the state level haven’t typically been warrior conservatives like Sen. Rick Santorum, who lost his Pennsylvania seat in 2006, or the man who was beating Specter in the Republican polls this year.
Former Ohio Republican Sen. Mike DeWine was much in the Voinovich vein.
But, still, there is that Ken Blackwell strain of the party for the Voinovich types to worry about.
Clearly, the Republicans representing Ohio don’t have much freedom to maneuver. Voinovich has taken the independence thing about as far as it can be taken.
The next degree of independence is Specter, the “left-winger” who is being bidden “good riddance.”
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio politics
Editorial: Not fixing Medicaid costs everybody
Ohio’s hospitals and nursing homes are ticked about Gov. Ted. Strickland’s budget. They can take a number.
With the exception of some schools (which believe that the governor has set them up to get much more money in the future, though not so much now), nobody is happy.
State employees (who won’t get raises for the next three years and must take five-day furloughs this year and next), people who feed the hungry, local governments — they are all disappointed.
Specifically, the health-care providers are mad that Gov. Strickland wants to increase a tax that only they pay. The proceeds from it are used to tap federal Medicaid dollars that must be matched by the state.
(Medicaid is the government program that provides medical care for the needy, and nursing home care for the poor and those who became poor after paying their nursing home bills.)
Historically, both industries have paid the tax willingly because Ohio has paid the money back — dollar-for-dollar — to offset the cost of providing charity care.
In this Strickland budget, the governor would increase the tax to bring in about $600 million, but the providers would only get $187 million back. Thus, they’d pay $400 million in new taxes.
That opens up a door that hospitals and nursing homes don’t even want to go through.
As compared to other industries, it’s hard to fret about hospitals.
Many say they’re losing money, and across the country, many have closed. Still, many others are buying and building like gangbusters. They also have created all sorts of work-arounds that move money off their books.
Meanwhile, executive compensation is beyond generous.
As for the nursing home industry, in Ohio, it has had a great gig going, almost always getting most of what it wants from the Legislature in reimbursements and with regard to regulations.
Knowing these realities, Gov. Strickland — when he looked at a $54 billion two-year budget that is being patched together mainly with $6.7 billion in one-time federal stimulus money — decided hospitals and nursing homes could be hit up to pay more than in the past.
This week his budget proposal was worked over in the Democratic Ohio House — with the hospitals and nursing homes getting more, but not all of, their money back.
Now the legislation moves to the Republican-controlled Senate. Who knows what will happen there.
The complaint from hospitals and nursing homes about their taxes is important less on its merit and more because of the point it makes about the crushing cost of refusing to make enough Medicaid reforms.
After all, if hospitals can legitimately complain about their financial problems, it’s because Medicaid is fraught with inequities and crazy rules that drive up costs.
However, what’s not well understood is that that fact affects everybody — not just poor people and health-care providers.
Consider:
—Because Medicaid reimbursement rates are low, hospitals, doctors and nursing homes charge more to people who have insurance, driving up their rates.
—When hospitals or medical providers cut services and employees because Medicaid shortchanges them, the quality of care for all patients suffers.
—The more of your tax dollars that the state spends on Medicaid, the less money there is for other things (or the more your taxes go up). Today almost 40 percent of the entire state budget goes for this program.
The most pressing and vexing issue is not that Gov. Strickland wants to ding the health care industry. It’s that Medicaid, as it exists in Ohio, is unsustainable.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Ohio politics, Social Services
