On the same day the U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal Obamacare, Arizona legislators voted to buy into Brewercare. All democrat senators and a handful of republican senators voted down cost and transparency reforms and voted for increasing funding for adult education and funding for the State Parks Board and Arts Commission in the $8.8 billion budget.
Senate President Biggs began Thursday’s COW session with “homely stories.” He warned his fellow legislators that they were “focusing on short-term promises and hoping that this will just work out overtime” but that buying into the Governor’s plan would “ultimately produce only bitter fruit that will unfairly damage our future. It will prevent progress.”
Medicare loomed over the legislature like a skinny carrot over a horse, and they passed only by a simple majority of 19 11; not enough to avoid a legal battle. The Arizona Constitution requires a two-thirds vote for new taxes. While democrats argue that it is a fee and not a tax, it is unlikely that argument would pass the smell test.
Biggs and Yarbrough warned colleagues that they will regret the decision, “This is a stunning example of our ceding power to the executive branch that will serve as a terrible precedent,” said Yarbrough.
Biggs, who had earlier shared a “teaching moment” he had with his young son, said “ironically my son and his children will be the ones who have to pay back the billions of dollars of the federal government must borrow in order to magically get Arizona this money. The money Arizona gets now “will unfairly burden our children and our grandchildren.” Biggs said he was “deeply saddened” by the urgency to do something that “will lock us in. There’s no need to do that today.”
There are still many hurdles for the Brewercare supporters.