Kansas lawmakers will have failed if Medicaid expansion, abortion amendment are derailed

Make no mistake about it: The success or failure of the Kansas Legislature’s 2020 session — and maybe even life or death for some Kansans without health care — is riding entirely on the next few days and weeks.

The fates of Medicaid expansion and a constitutional amendment limiting abortion have become intertwined with the fate of the legislative session itself.

Especially when it comes to Medicaid expansion. If Medicaid expansion isn’t passed this year, as a majority of legislators say they want, then they will have failed utterly.

If lawmakers also fail to give voters the opportunity to weigh in on the abortion amendment, then the session will have been doubly the failure.

It’s time for lawmakers to step up, reach out, compromise, do their jobs and get these two things done. Now.

The difficulty, of course, is that Senate President Susan Wagle, a Republican from Wichita, has tied the outcomes for those two issues together: When the Kansas House failed to approve the abortion amendment earlier this month by the necessary two-thirds majority — falling four votes short of the 84 required — Wagle immediately promised Medicaid expansion wouldn’t see the light of day in the Senate until the House tried again and passed the abortion amendment.

There things have stood since the failed House vote on Feb. 7. It’s been a congressional-sized clog in the state’s legislative machinery.

Abortion amendment supporter Kansans For Life says it is trying to break the logjam by impressing on hesitant Republicans what the group sees as the dangers of approving Medicaid expansion without a constitutional amendment allowing legislative limits on abortion.

Perhaps that’s a winning strategy. But it might also help if proponents dropped their insistence on holding the public referendum on the amendment in the low-turnout August primary and agreed to a more robust public vote in the November general election.

Jeanne Gawdun, Kansans For Life director of government, argues that “attempts to move the measure to the November ballot play right into the hands of the abortion industry” and its “unlimited resources” to muddle the issue — which is basically whether to countermand a 2019 Kansas Supreme Court ruling and give lawmakers the power to enact limitations on abortion.

But that stance — that we can’t trust too many voters with this vital decision — gives Kansans very little credit for knowing what they’re voting on.

On a matter of this import and impact, we should want as many voters to weigh in as possible. It’s only right. And it’s good public policy. Otherwise you’re likely to have a minority imposing its will on the majority, and that generally doesn’t work for long.

Yet, instead of yielding to the broader public will, amendment supporters appear prepared to torpedo their own amendment — and to take down the cause of Medicaid expansion with it, denying health care to, and perhaps endangering the lives of, as many as 130,000 residents.

Of much lesser importance, but of keen interest to legislators, the failure to approve Medicaid expansion would endanger some political careers: Such a failure of Republicans especially, who are in the majority and in the highest positions of leadership in the Legislature, would undoubtedly become a major issue in the coming elections.

The deadline for the House and Senate to pass bills that originated in their chamber is Thursday — though the abortion amendment is exempt from that deadline. Medicaid expansion is not exempt, and technically the Senate bill dies if not passed by then. Even after that, there are other bills through which Medicaid expansion could be passed in the Senate, including one from the House that’s already made it over.

But everything apparently depends on the abortion amendment.

It shouldn’t.

“Kansans want affordable health care. They need it now,” says Gov. Laura Kelly, who announced a deal on the issue with Senate Republican Leader Jim Denning in January. “We cannot delay expansion any longer and weigh down this bipartisan compromise with additional barriers. The compromise Sen. Denning and I introduced was sponsored by a majority of Kansas senators.

“Partisanship and political games must not get in the way of progress. I encourage my legislative colleagues — most of whom believe expansion is the right thing to do — to demand a vote on the Senate floor. We must get this done — and get it done right.”

Making law is often about using deadlines as leverage, pushing decision-making to the last minute. But some brinkmanship includes actual brinks, over which real people can tumble.

The Kansas Legislature is playing a dangerous game of chicken with Medicaid expansion and the abortion amendment — and, truth be known, with the public health.

Lawmakers, it’s crunch time. Do your jobs.