WisGOPs ties themselves further in knots to get stimulus thru budget tricks

I expect dumb things from the WisGOPs as they try to hack up the state budget. But they've backed themselves into such a corner due to their previous Koched-up foolishness that now they're crossing over into the absurd.

When I saw this tweet cross (as the Bucks were in the process of their pathetic choke job) last night, my face went into weird contortions and I said "WHAAAT?"

Marklein says committee went with bonding over GPR due to concerns about meeting maintenance of effort requirement for feds to qualify Wisconsin for $2.2 billion in federal aid.

MOE is based off education spending as share of GPR.

— JR Ross (@jrrosswrites) June 15, 2021

So the WisGOPs want to borrow money for broadband, in a time when we have $5.9 billion in extra CASH projected over the next 2 years. And here you thought Republicans hated debt!

As Ross points out, the reason is because by borrowing the money, less state tax dollars are spent in this budget. Which means that less state tax dollars have to be spent in order to get the $2.3 billion in stimulus for K-12 (and more for higher education) that we are currently falling short of.

Brilliant strategy there, guys! And it's also a tell that the WisGOPs are feeling the heat for putting those billions in education funds at risk for no legitimate reason beyond trying to handcuff the recovery in this state ahead of the 2022 elections.

You may recall that there was an easier way to cut state spending and make it easy to qualify for that K-12 stimulus with the small increase WisGOP has given it - just expand Medicaid! But they haven't taken money from right-wing oligarchs for all these years to admit that they were wrong, even though the Finance Committee were discussing Medicaid last night.

But that doesn't mean that WisGOPs had a problem with grabbing more Federal money for Medicaid yesterday. Take a look at the motion that JFC passed on Medicaid yesterday, where

1. Medical Assistance Cost-to-Continue Estimate (LFB Summary, Page 250, #2; LFB Paper #335). Adopt the MA cost-to-continue reestimate, which would provide funding of $1,361,991,300 ($120,307,000 GPR, $987,447,400 FED, $192,843,400 PR, and $61,393,500 SEG) in 2021-22 and $1,258,573,900 ($397,244,700 GPR, $652,366,400 FED, $214,277,400 PR, and -$5,314,600 SEG) in 2022-23. In addition, adjust the cost-to-continue reestimate to provide $25,900,000 ($9,600,000 GPR and $16,300,000 FED) in 2021-22 and $51,400,000 ($20,500,000 GPR and $30,900,000 FED) in 2022-23, reflecting the impact of the Department's proposed rate increase to managed care organizations providing services under Family Care, PACE, and Partnership, subject to approval by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Notice that increase in 2021-22 of $987.5 million FED vs $120.3 million GPR? How is that happening? Let's dig back into the Paper #335.

....Over the past several years, the FMAP has generally been between 58% and 60%, meaning that the state's share of costs has been between 42% and 40%. However, a provision of the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), which was passed in March of 2020, provides a temporary 6.2 percentage point increase to the state's FMAP, applicable for any quarter that the federal public health emergency associated with the COVID-19 pandemic is in effect. Thus, in federal fiscal year 2020-21, while the standard FMAP would have been 59.4%, the enhanced FMAP under FFCRA is 65.6%, reducing the state's share from 40.6% to 34.4%. This increase also affects the applicable matching percentage for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), since the Medicaid FMAP is the basis for the CHIP formula. In federal fiscal year 2020-21, the enhanced CHIP FMAP is 75.9%, up 4.3 percentage points from the standard CHIP FMAP of 71.6%.

6. A key assumption for the cost-to-continue estimate, as it relates to the state's FMAP, is the duration of the federal public health emergency, since this will determine how many additional quarters the FFCRA enhanced FMAP will be in effect. CMS has told states to expect the public health emergency will remain until at least the rest of calendar year 2021. Based on this notice, the administration's cost-to-continue estimate assumed that the enhanced FMAP will expire at the end of calendar year 2021, meaning that the standard FMAP would be applicable in the final six months of state fiscal year 2021-22 and all of 2022-23. While it is possible that the public health emergency willbe extended further, there would be considerable risk in making this assumption for the purposes of establishing the GPR budget for MA. Thus, the estimate presented in this paper adopts the same assumption as the administration's estimate for the expiration of the enhanced FMAP.

So WisGOP has no problem with grabbing more Federal money for Medicaid as part of the COVID-19 bill. But saving $1.6 billion by using another stimulus bill to pay for Medicaid? Not so much.

WisGOP also educed the amount of state money going into Medicaid by hundreds of millions of dollars by using money from other sources.

2. Transfer from the Permanent Endowment Fund to the Medical Assistance Trust Fund. Modify a statutory provision that requires an annual transfer of $50,000,000 in each year from the permanent endowment fund (tobacco settlement sale proceeds) to the medical assistance trust fund (MATF) and the remainder to the general fund to specify, instead, that all amounts in the permanent endowment fund are transferred each year to the MATF. Increase estimated MATF revenues by $47,290,000 in 2021-22 and $53,562,400 in 2022-23 and reduce estimated general fund revenues by corresponding amounts. Increase the MATF appropriation for MA benefits by $47,290,000 in 2021-22 and $53,562,400 in 2022-23 and reduce the GPR appropriation by corresponding amounts.

3. Transfer from the General Fund to the Medical Assistance Trust Fund. Transfer $174,665,900 in 2021-22 and $527,783,700 in 2022-23 from the general fund to the medical assistance trust fund. Increase MATF SEG appropriation for MA benefits by $174,665,900 SEG in 2021-22 and $527,783,700 FED in 2022-23 and reduce the GPR appropriation for MA benefits by corresponding amounts.

Theoretically, it's not so bad that we are using these Trust Funds to pay for services - it generally happens anyway, as sort of a revolving fund. But it lowers the amount of state funding that we have to base the next budget off of, and it makes it harder to fill in future deficits if costs and/or enrollments increase.

Put it together, and it means that despite there being a projected increase of $3.555 billion in Medicaid spending, GPR only accounts for 1.3% of that increase ($47 million). Which means that there's fewer dollars needed to reach that MOE, and more room for WisGOPs to try to shove through exorbitant tax cuts, which they will likely do in tomorrow's JFC meeting.

What yesterday's Finance Follies illustrate is the series of bad decisions and twisted logic that followed WisGOP's decision back in 2013 not to take the expanded Medicaid from the Black Man in the White House. As each year has gone by and Obamacare continued to save money, the reasoning has gotten dumber and dumber, to the point where WisGOPs now have no problem using a lot of money from DC to pay for Medicaid, or for the working poor to get coverage under Obamacare - they just can't allow us to save money by giving the working poor the option of BadgerCare.

No, it makes no sense, but when you live inside of a Bubble of RW BS and gerrymandered districts, having to make sense isn't as necessary.