The off-year fiscal legislative session that began Monday will offer uncommon drama this time.
That’s because of the debate about whether to reauthorize both the private-option form of Medicaid expansion and the budget of the staff for nobody in the lieutenant governor’s office.
Here, then, is a rundown of the key players:
House Speaker Davy Carter of Cabot—He’s been busy lately running Johnny Allison’s banks. So he has very little idea what’s going on with his membership on these issues. But that didn’t stop him from doing a media blitz last week in promotion of sustaining the private option. He was on local TV news so much I thought Steve Landers had adopted him.
Senate President Pro Tem Michael Lamoureux of Russellville—A large, avuncular type, he has been working diligently to try to find the vital 27th vote for the private option in the Senate. Some of his colleagues fault him only in that they think he is entirely too gloomy after a bad day. He also is all strung out trying to save the four Republican jobs in the nonexistent lieutenant governor’s office.
Rep. John Burris of Harrison—For policy command, communication skill and an ability to read and lead people, I find him the best Arkansas state legislator since Mike Beebe. His championing of the private option gives it the solid conservative bona fides of a guy who, in his greatest personal failing, is employed as state political director for the grim extremist, Tom Cotton, U.S. Senate candidate for the Koch brothers.
Sen. Missy Irvin of Mountain View—A doctor’s wife and a doctor’s daughter, she thinks doctors don’t get enough money from private insurance carriers and Medicaid. So she thinks she just might abandon the private option, after casting a key vote for it last time. That’ll show ’em. Cutting off her nose to spite her face would be a small sacrifice to her protest.
Sens. Jonathan Dismang of Beebe and David Sanders of Little Rock—These young Republicans are the policy wizards on the private option. They take the great risk of lacing their philosophical conservatism with pragmatism, and of challenging their party’s small-government superficiality with good-government substance. Dismang is the next president pro tem of the Senate, and Sanders might ascend after that.
Rep. Nate Bell of Mena—A Tea Partier and rabid right-winger who made fun of Bostonians for being on lockdown against a terrorist instead of taking up their own arms, he has decided the private option shouldn’t be ended now, but maybe later. He will take the lead in putting some kind of amendment on the appropriation to try to get the program sustained for the time being. Or at least that was the case Monday.
Sens. Keith Ingram of West Memphis and Bruce Maloch of Magnolia—Leaders of the Democratic minority in the Senate, they have placed a hold on the appropriation bill for the staff that Lamoureux wants to save in the vacant lieutenant governor’s office.
Rep. Greg Leding of Fayetteville—The Democratic leader of the House, he has a 48-vote caucus with which to block the lieutenant governor’s appropriation as well as—if he and his caucus possess the nerve—the entire Medicaid appropriation if a tiny Republican minority blocks it over the portion going to the private option.
Sen. Jim Hendren of Gravette—He’s probably the leader and surely the most savvy of the presumably nine “no” votes in the state Senate on the private option. That’s not to say he is likely to switch. It’s to say he … oh, I don’t know … is worthy of keeping an eye on, I guess.
Rep. Duncan Baird of Lowell—He’s the son-in-law of the chief of staff in the vacant lieutenant governor’s office. He’s the budget committee co-chairman. He also is a candidate for state treasurer. So he’s all gummed up in everything. He says he will remove himself from the lieutenant governor’s debate. That’s the next-best thing to the right thing.
Then you have members of the press, who, according to Hillary Clinton from the newly scoured papers at the University of Arkansas of her late good friend Diane Blair, are all ego and no brains.
In behalf of all reporters everywhere, I offer the immortal words of Fredo Corleone, who, in The Godfather, shouted: “I’m smart. Not like everybody says—like dumb. I’m smart and I want respect!”
And you know what happened to Fredo.
John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.