Arkansas Politics & Government Online Community

Ballots cast in Arkansas' primary election are just the first step in a process designed to bring local Democrats' wishes to the party convention in Milwaukee this summer.

A Medicaid expansion would have brought $35 billion in federal dollars into Georgia over 10 years. But Gov. Nathan Deal said no: Medicaid is broken, and the last thing we should do is make it even bigger. The promise of those federal billions, however, has proven irresistible to many states, even some that are just as conservative as Georgia. Arkansas leaders, for example, took a look at all the poor and unhealthy people in their state, and then they took a look at the boatloads of federal money that would flow in to pay for Medicaid expansion.

In late 2012, a small group of Arkansas Republicans met within the marbled halls of the Capitol and set a politically hazardous course. Their destination was a place few conservative lawmakers wanted even to think about. How could they transform the Affordable Care Act, a law they detested, into a tonic for their unhealthy and poverty-stricken state, and still honor their conservative principles? The result would be Arkansas’ “private option” Medicaid expansion, an innovative — and untested — program that has extended health coverage to more than 233,000 poor Arkansans.

Arkansas lawmakers moved Thursday to restore a 2013 capital gains tax break that had been scaled back to help pay for a $102 million middle class income tax reduction that Gov. Asa Hutchinson championed.