Hostage Situation: ‘Cooper Crisis’ Continues as Democrats Demand Medicaid Expansion, Press Helps

RALEIGH – And the Left-leaning media is doing all they can to help Democrats bludgeon North Carolina with their Big Government agenda. Governor Roy Cooper has been holding round table discussions with people that would get “free” healthcare if he can just get by those darned Republicans and their habits of respecting the limited government roles as defined in our constitution and supported by the ‘self-evident truths’ articulated at the founding of our nation.

Case in point: A News & Observer article that begins by framing Democrats as compassionate toward low-income people that make a little too much money to qualify for a hand out, and Republicans as the mean-spirited bullies blocking the governor from extending that hand out to them.

It goes on to describe the budget standoff over Medicaid expansion; essentially, Cooper wants to help people, and Republicans are mean.

In reality, Cooper is playing hostage politics, holding up a $24 billion budget for the sake of one of the North Carolina Democratic Parties wish-list items. The House has entertained a Republican “compromise” that creates a new Big Government health insurance entitlement, yet attaches a work requirement and nominal premium. Even that isn’t enough for the hostage-taker, who feels the work requirement is unfair and the small premiums too much for people that make too much for Medicaid.

Luckily, the Republicans in the North Carolina Senate see write through Cooper’s games and aren’t fooled by slapping a Republican label on a plan to expand of healthcare entitlements in the state.

“[…] Berger’s response to a question on what he thought of the House compromise bill was: “A rose by any other name would smell the same.”

Cooper said Wednesday it’s the Republican leadership, not rank-and-file members, who are holding up negotiations.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown, a Jacksonville Republican, said in response to Cooper’s comments Wednesday that leaders “have never said it’s our budget or nothing.”

“A $24 billion budget shouldn’t be held hostage over a single policy disagreement. But every time leaders try to negotiate a budget with the Governor, they are told that Medicaid expansion is a pre-condition of passing any budget,” Brown said in a statement.

“Regarding the cop-out line that Medicaid expansion ‘has to be part of the conversation’ – it is. Republicans offered a special legislative session dedicated solely to the Governor’s top priority, and we even included that in the budget. That makes Medicaid expansion ‘part of the conversation.’ But the Governor refused, insisting again that Medicaid expansion pass into law before a budget is passed,” Brown said.”

Despite the senator leaders’ tough stand, Cooper is assisted in leveraging the bully pulpit by press that will gladly offer countless stories of people are hard times in order to elicit compassion, and therefore support for expansion. They quote people, after outlining their hard times, saying they, “don’t want a hand out, just help.”

It’s a distinction without a difference. Medicaid is a handout. It is funded by taxpayers whose earnings are confiscated in order to hand that money to other people. It is, plain and simple, a redistribution of wealth based on the moral fallacy that some people’s needs trump others’ rights.

The notion that expansion involves an injection of federal money, and not state money, means that North Carolina taxpayers aren’t paying for it is half-baked. Do North Carolinians not pay federal taxes?

‘Oh, yes,’ they say, ‘but, this federal money is going to other states, so wouldn’t it be better if it came back to our state?‘

Is it coming back to the North Carolina taxpayers that paid the taxes? No.

And it’s not just Medicaid expansion. Cooper told reporters that if he (and the media) is successful in pressuring Republicans to concede on expansion, he also wants to “negotiate” further on teacher pay and school construction funding (even though he vetoed a budget including teacher raises and billions in school construction funding).

Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile. Republicans on Jones Street would do well to not offer any concessions to the governor who’s taken the budget hostage and is now making demands.

Read the full article from Cooper’s media agents here.