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Columbus
Dispatch
Revising
Kasich’s budget will
require rebalancing revenue
By Jim Siegel
Wednesday February 27, 2013
Conservative
groups don’t want
Republicans to expand Medicaid. Oil and gas drillers don’t like the
proposed severance
tax on them. Some businesses don’t like parts of the sales-tax
expansion. And
schools and local governments want more money.
Any
of these changes would punch
varying-size holes in Gov. John Kasich’s proposed two-year, $63.3
billion
budget. But unlike some of the more recent budgets, lawmakers would
have
choices in how to fill those holes.
State
budgets must be balanced.
Doing away with proposals that generate revenue or save money means
replacing
the money.
“This
is not a rare budget, but it
has some big components to it,” said Rep. Ron Amstutz, R-Wooster,
chairman of
the House Finance Committee.
Legislative
Republicans are uneasy
with Kasich’s plan to expand Medicaid under the federal health-care law
to
cover about 275,000 low-income uninsured Ohioans. However, if they do
away with
it, they have to make up the $404 million in estimated savings that the
expansion would produce. (The expansion would be 100 percent federally
funded
for three years.)
Rep.
Barbara Sears, R-Toledo, said
“the math works in the budget” on the Medicaid expansion, but lawmakers
are
looking to other states for ideas on modifying the plan.
“Sustainability is
still my No. 1 concern,” she said.
New
Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
yesterday became the eighth GOP governor to call for a Medicaid
expansion…
Read
the rest of the article at the Columbus
Dispatch
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