8 April 2015

Buttrey Medicaid bill was not a bipartisan compromise

Democrats who are conflict averse, and many are, worship bipartisanship and compromise as intrinsic goods. Therefore it’s no surprise that many Democrats touted SB-405, Sen. Ed Buttrey’s (R-Great Falls) Medicaid expansion bill, as a grand and worthy bipartisan bargain. SB-405 was indeed a compromise — not a very good compromise, in my opinion — but it was not a truly bipartisan bill. On this, Rep. Art Wittich (R-Bozeman) was right (from the Missoulian):

He [Wittich] also rejected the idea that SB405, sponsored by Sen. Ed Buttrey, a Great Falls Republican, is a bipartisan compromise.

“The reality is that 85 percent of the Republican caucus does not support SB405,” he said. “They were never consulted. They were never negotiated with. This idea that somehow when 15 percent of the (Republican) caucus compromises on a bill with the Democrats and that it is the, with a capital T, compromise bill is not persuasive.

SB-405 received 21 of 21 Democratic votes in the MT Senate, but only seven of 29 (24 percent) Republican votes.

In the House, 12 of 59 Republicans — 20 percent of the GOP caucus — are listed as co-sponsors of the bill.

That meets the Democratic definition of bipartisan — at least one Republican supporter — but not mine. As Politifact reports:

Though there is no formal definition for a bipartisan bill, many political scientists defer to the terms defined by Congressional Quarterly Roll Call, the Washington publication group which has long tracked partisan bills as those that receive support from less than 50 percent of both parties, which would be at least 121 votes from Republicans and 85 votes from Democrats.

That actually doesn’t go far enough for me. If a bill isn’t supported by at least a true majority of each political party’s caucus, it’s not bipartisan.

SB-405 has a Republican sponsor, 20 Republican and 4 Democratic co-sponsors, the support of 100 percent of the Democratic caucus, and the support approximately one-fifth of the Republican caucus. It’s best described as a bill with a Republican sponsor and policy, full support of the Democratic caucus, and three to one opposition among Republicans.

Bipartisan? Not by any reasonable definition. A compromise? Yes. A compromise worth supporting? On that, opinion differs.