Republicans retained control of the Virginia Senate in a closely watched election Tuesday, preventing the Democrat governor from pursuing an expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare.
“We had a great night,” Bill McCollum, chairman of the Republican State Leadership Committee, said during a conference call with reporters Wednesday, citing the party’s victories in Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Maine on Tuesday.
Republicans maintained a 21-19 majority in the Virginia Senate, which had been “a top priority for both parties.”
Gov. Terry McAuliffe, D-Va., had worked to flip control of the state Senate in his party’s favor in order to advance his agenda, which includes Medicaid expansion in the state.
The GOP-controlled Virginia Legislature rejected the governor’s proposal to expand Medicaid earlier this year.
As a result of Republicans’ retaining control of the Senate, McAuliffe’s goal of expanding Medicaid in the state under Obamacare appears to be blocked.
In an interview with The Daily Signal, Michael Thompson, chairman and president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, a non-partisan Virginia policy foundation, said, “I’m sure he was not happy, but that’s OK.”
He said that the governor’s Medicaid initiative “isn’t going anywhere.”
He believes adding “400,000 people to the Medicaid rolls,” as the governor had proposed, would have resulted in a “fiscal crisis” for the state.
Thompson said McAuliffe’s Medicaid goals should be “left in the top drawer of his desk if he’s smart.”
“How do you craft something to help them that’s less onerous than a bankrupt entitlement program?”
