Springfield Rep. Bob Dixon said it was going to be one of the first pieces of legislation lawmakers dealt with this year.
But now, halfway through the 2007 legislative session, there's been no passage of a bill to restore Medicaid coverage to workers with disabilities. (A reader appropriately notes the bill passed the House on Feb. 15th)
But the issue has never been the House. MAWD has cleared the House before. It has been the Senate, where it now sits in committee.
"We have spent three months debating things like the state reptile, or state game bird, yet 750,000 Missourians remain without health insurance because of the Governor and Republican majority’s lack of action,” said House Minority Leader Jeff Harris. “The Governor has admitted cuts to the MAWD program were a mistake. However, we have not seen any sign that he plans to do something about it anytime soon.”
Republican leaders promised to deal with it last year. They said they'd have it passed by March this year. When do they begin to lose credibility with the voters who elected them?
2 comments:
The House passed the MAWD bill on February 15. Do your homework.
True, it did pass the House. But that's never been the issue. I should have been more clear in my post that the problem has always been passage in the Senate, where it now sits in committee. It passed the House last year, and then never made it out of the Senate. So the question is: Will House leaders work out a deal with the Senate leaders of their own party to make this happen? And why hasn't it happened yet? The closer they get to the end of the session when things get more hectic, the less likely it will happen.
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