Christine Jordan Sexton
Senate Appropriations Chairman Tom Lee said Thursday night he’s beginning to plan how to bring the 2o15 Session in for a landing if lawmakers can’t resolve the budget impasse between the House and Senate.
Lee said the chambers must reach an accord by “the middle of next week or thereabouts and then we are out of business.”
Then the questions become whether the Legislature extends the regular 2015 Legislative Session or whether it chooses to meet in a special session. He said those are the conversations he’s starting with House members, including Appropriations Chairman Richard Corcoran.
“You don’t want to look like a deer in the headlights when you get to that place where you can’t conference and everybody starts going ‘OK, well now what are we going to do?’ So you start having that conversation now as it becomes more likely.”
The Senate has passed an $80.4 billion budget and the House of Representatives has passed a $76.2 billion spending plan. The difference is the inclusion of federal health care dollars. The Senate budget includes a continuation of LIP funding at $2 billion and includes $2.8 billion in federal funding for Medicaid expansion as outlined in the Senate FHIX proposal, SB 7044, sponsored by Sen. Aaron Bean. The FHIX bill would use federal Medicaid money under the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, to provide health access to those Floridians at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
The House budget doesn’t contain any Medicaid expansion dollars or Low Income Pool dollars.
While the chambers may not be able to reach an accord, Lee said he hopes to have “some kind of answer” from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on the continuation of the Low Income Pool, which is supplemental Medicaid money the state uses to offset the cost of uncompensated care.
Florida has received LIP funding for nine years, initially secured by then-Gov. Jeb Bush. CMS put Florida on notice in April 2014 that the LIP funding would expire June 30, 2015.
Lee said he hopes the state will be advised about the amount of LIP funding, but that he suspects it won’t to be good news.
“I think we’re going to get some kind of answer and it’s going to create a whole new set of problems we are going to have to deal with,” Lee said. “The more I get into this, the more I believe we have known for a very long time that LIP was not going to be extended in anything that remotely resembles its current form. Now I hope that’s not true, but the more I learn about this, the more I believe we have known this for a long time.”
