Health & Fitness
Groups call Ohio governor's Medicaid, balanced budget stances 'contradictory'
By Maggie Thurber | for Ohio Watchdog
It is contradictory for Ohio Gov. John Kasich to push for a federal balanced budget amendment and then take millions of federal dollars to expand Medicaid, two groups say.
John MacAvoy, a spokesman for the Northwest Ohio Conservative Coalition, said his group supports the balanced budget amendment, but believes it’s incompatible with the Medicaid expansion.
“Obamacare Medicaid expansion must borrow money if it’s to be implemented,” he said. “You cannot have both.”
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It’s “absolutely” contradictory, said Alyene Senger, a research associate at The Heritage Foundation. “This is spending more money to expand an already broken entitlement program when the federal government is facing a fiscal crisis.”
That fiscal crisis is what prompted the push for a balance budget amendment.