Tuesday Wrap: Budget held hostage, Day 16

The impasse over the $24 billion state budget and Medicaid expansion continues to drag out and will soon be measured in weeks instead of days.

Posted 11:30 p.m. Jul 16, 2019 — Updated 11:56 p.m. Jul 16, 2019

RALEIGH, N.C. — The impasse over the $24 billion state budget and Medicaid expansion continues to drag out and will soon be measured in weeks instead of days.

Senate leaders rolled out their own stopgap spending plan on Tuesday, which is markedly different from one House members approved unanimously last week. Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger also floated the idea of packing up and going home until late August since there's been no movement on a budget deal with Gov. Roy Cooper.

House Speaker Tim Moore, who continues to play the numbers game in hoping to pull over an override of Cooper's budget veto, isn't so keen to head home just yet.

Meanwhile, loose ends such as the Farm Act, a change to how Duke Energy rate increases could be handled and a proposal to require sheriffs to honor federal immigration detainers on county jail inmates are left twisting in the wind.

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