The majority of the House cast initial votes in favor of the supplemental budget plan on Feb. 11, 2025. (Photo by Emma Davis/ Maine Morning Star)
The ultimate outcome of the short-term budget plan to close the imminent MaineCare gap will not be known for two more weeks after the Legislature’s presiding officers opted against taking final enactment votes Tuesday evening.
When asked why during a press conference, Senate President Mattie Daughtry (D-Brunswick) said, “I would say that we are hoping to be able to continue the conversation.”
However, Daughtry indicated Democrats do not intend to add anything more to the plan, after Republicans attempted a number of floor amendments on Tuesday.
“We’ve reached the limit of what makes sense with the emergency supplemental,” she said.
The final votes are delayed until Feb. 25, the next day lawmakers are in session. This postponement comes after the Democratic majority in both chambers cast initial votes in favor of the budget plan earlier Tuesday, but failed to garner Republican support.
Without two-thirds support, the legislation won’t be able to take effect immediately upon the governor’s signature, resulting in the funding not becoming available until May and the state likely needing to withhold payments from health care providers.
When the Senate returned around 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Republicans unsuccessfully attempted to pass many of the same amendments that House Republicans failed to pass earlier on Tuesday.
Sen. Peggy Rotundo (D-Lewiston), co-chair of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee, which sets the budget, said the committee had considered these Republican proposals but ultimately decided they were too substantial for the short-term budget.
“The supplemental budget is not the time for debates on large policy changes,” Rotundo said Tuesday evening. “We will see those debates as part of the biennial process.”
Among these measures were proposals to instruct the state to request a waiver from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to temporarily freeze enrollment for able-bodied, childless adults and to eventually create a permanent program cap, as well as another waiver to institute work requirements for such people to access MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program.
Minority Leader Trey Stewart (R-Aroostook) proposed these additions in the Senate, following Republican budget lead Rep. Jack Ducharme’s earlier attempts to do so in the House.
“The first thing you should do when you realize you’re in a hole is stop digging,” Stewart said of the MaineCare deficit.
In 2017, former Republican Gov. Paul LePage requested a federal waiver to institute work requirements, which President Donald Trump approved during his last term, days before LePage left office. However, when Democratic Gov. Janet Mills took over, she rejected the waiver.
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“It was approved at the federal level by what’s now the current administration,” Stewart said on the Senate floor. “I have no doubt it will be again the second that we offer it up.”
In response, Rotundo said given the expectation for the Trump administration to impose such requirements nationally, “it just didn’t make sense to ask members of the Department of Health and Human Services at this point to spend a lot of time developing a waiver when we probably will be facing new requirements around work requirements sometime soon.”
Republicans in both chambers also attempted floor amendments to add back limits to General Assistance that Mills initially proposed but later agreed to push for in the two-year budget instead.
House Republican Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham of Winter Harbor shared in a statement Tuesday afternoon that Republicans would not be backing down.
“Let me be clear: it is the Republicans who are defending the provisions this Governor originally included in the budget,” Faulkingham wrote. “We will not be intimidated. We will remain firm in our commitment to the people of Maine and continue to demand fiscal responsibility.”
On the Senate floor, Rotundo said she believed there to be bipartisan agreement that General Assistance reform is needed. However, she described the limits Mills sought to impose as “taking a meat cleaver to the program.”
“It’s going to take housing away from Maine residents fairly quickly, which is going to create greater homelessness,” Rotundo said.
The Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee recommended removing such a change from the supplemental and Rotundo said the budget committee opted to follow their charge.
Some of the amendments considered Tuesday evening were unique to the high chamber.
One from Sen. Marianne Moore (R-Washington) had earlier shown some promise for bipartisan support. Four Democrats joined Republicans in a vote to consider the proposal to offer modest cost-of-living adjustment for the current fiscal year for essential support workers.
However, a motion to approve the amendment later failed, 16-18.
The amendment aimed to address payments withheld by the Mills administration starting this year — a move providers and lawmakers argue is a violation of state law.
The Senate also considered an amendment from Sen. Joseph Martin (R-Oxford) that would’ve called for an audit of that decision, as well as lawmakers not taking action to reinstate the cost-of-living adjustments in the supplemental.
“I’m not interested in breaking the law and therefore I would like to see an audit of this,” Martin said.
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