NC Democrats slam Republicans over casinos and budget delay, propose new compromise
Democratic leaders Thursday indicated they could help Republican lawmakers break the stalemate on North Carolina's budget negotiations — if they can pass some priorities of their own, including more funding for schools and state worker raises.
The budget is months overdue, held up as GOP lawmakers have failed to come to a consensus on whether to use the budget to legalize casinos.
"They’re not here trying to make your lives better," said Rep. Robert Reives, the top-ranking House Democrat, at a news conference Thursday. "They’re here trying to figure out how to take care of their cronies."
The casino plan hasn't been made public. But WRAL has reported, based on a leaked draft, that it could potentially benefit a specific gaming company whose executives have recently showered top Republicans with thousands in campaign donations.
Despite Democrats' criticisms, the budget also contains perhaps the top policy goal of North Carolina Democrats for the past decade: Medicaid expansion. It will give health insurance to hundreds of thousands of the state's working poor, people who make too much to qualify for other safety net programs but too little to afford coverage on the private market.
Democratic leaders slammed Republicans Thursday for letting casinos hold up Medicaid expansion — as well as holding up state employee raises and everything else that can't become law without the budget passing. But they also indicated they'd be willing to work with the other party, finding a middle ground.
Reives said Democrats will release a plan within days to give bigger raises to state workers, bump up the cost-of-living pension adjustment for retired state workers and fully enact Medicaid expansion, among other priorities. He said it won't be as much as what Democrats suggested during initial budget negotiations this year, but they're trying to propose a compromise.
"It's less than what we want, but we feel it's reasonable," Reives said.
Top GOP leaders didn't seem immediately receptive to the idea. Republicans hold a veto-proof supermajority at the legislature this session and have not been accustomed to needing any Democratic votes to pass major legislation.
House Speaker Tim Moore — who leads the chamber with the most Republican opposition to casinos and gambling — said he hopes Democrats will vote for the Republicans' budget plan anyway, without him needing to make concessions. Senate leader Phil Berger said that if Moore does work with Democrats on a budget compromise, he's not certain his chamber's Republican members would go along.
"I'm certainly willing to listen," Berger added.
As long as the budget remains held up, teachers and other state workers aren't getting the raises their paychecks would normally already be reflecting.
New tax cuts also have yet to take effect. And hospitals and other healthcare providers are missing out on $1 billion or more that they'd have expected to see flood into the state from the federal government, via Medicaid expansion.
To Sen. Dan Blue, the top Senate Democrat, keeping Medicaid expansion tied up in the budget — even though the legislature already voted months ago to approve it — is particularly offensive.
"We have over 600,000 working adults without health insurance, gambling with their lives every day, and more will continue to die every day without Medicaid expansion," Blue said. "Thousands of North Carolinians have already died needlessly because of Republican inaction."
