Viewers who watched Morning Joe last week would be forgiven for coming down with a case of whiplash. Appearing on the MSNBC program as the Senate considered Republicans’ budget reconciliation measure, former Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, attacked the legislation for failing to solve America’s entitlement woes.
The criticism would have had more merit had Kasich not helped to worsen the nation’s fiscal woes during his tenure as governor. By publicly promoting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion to able-bodied adults, Kasich helped to create the problem that the reconciliation bill begins to address.
Embraced Obamacare — And a Fiscal “Scam”
Kasich, who served as House Budget Committee chairman when the Republican Congress and President Bill Clinton balanced the federal budget in the 1990s, decried the reconciliation bill as “another effort to kick the can down the road when it comes to the tremendous fiscal problems that we’re facing in this country.” He lamented that “we are racing toward the edge of a cliff … The national debt keeps rising, and there’s no serious appetite in Washington for fundamentally reforming the federal government.”
But while running the Buckeye State, Kasich exacerbated the fiscal cliff that Washington faces by embracing Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid to able-bodied adults. Data from the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) tells the tale. An expansion estimated to cover a maximum of 447,000 individuals had enrolled more than half a million within its first year, and exceeded 725,000 during Kasich’s tenure. As a result, a program projected to cost $7.4 billion in its first three years ended up costing nearly double that amount, or $14.5 billion.
How could Kasich afford to fund such a costly Medicaid expansion? In large part through a provider tax, a mechanism that Joe Biden called a “scam,” whereby assessments on hospitals and other medical facilities are used to generate additional federal matching dollars — and then sent right back to those hospitals. In Kasich’s last year in office, this money laundering scheme covered the vast majority of the state’s share of coverage costs — meaning federal taxpayers effectively picked up more than 99 percent of Ohio’s Medicaid expansion tab.
Prioritized the Able-Bodied Over the Vulnerable
To defend this entitlement expansion, Kasich in 2013 famously invoked his religious beliefs in favor of Medicaid expansion: “When you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small. But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor.”
The governor never explained why the first pontiff did not exhort him to prioritize people like Nathan Narowitz. Narowitz, a 24-year-old nonverbal Ohio resident, served as one of the plaintiffs in a 2016 lawsuit against Kasich’s administration over its treatment of individuals with disabilities. Narowitz waited for years to receive Medicaid treatment for his disability — one of more than 62,000 Ohio individuals with disabilities on Medicaid waiting lists in 2016, according to FGA — while Kasich, like Democrats in Washington, focused instead on covering able-bodied adults.
Hypocritical Messenger
Kasich accurately noted in his MSNBC appearance that Congress should embrace more comprehensive reforms to all of our entitlement programs than those included in the reconciliation measure. But lawmakers should not take any lessons in fiscal responsibility from a former governor who abused the very same provider tax scam that the reconciliation bill will help regulate.
Nor should they heed lectures on “saving those people who are the most vulnerable” from someone who prioritized coverage of able-bodied adults, 62 percent of whom report no income from work, while individuals with disabilities spent years waiting for care. When it comes to controlling entitlement spending, John Kasich serves as proof positive that those who aren’t part of the solution are part of the problem.