Lincoln Chafee: “Mr. President, it seems to me we have to make up our minds around here. Are we dealing with Medicaid reform or are we…”

“Mr. President, it seems to me we have to make up our minds around here. Are we dealing with Medicaid reform or are we not? The ground rules were--what we did in the Finance Committee, we dealt with welfare, we dealt with Medicaid. Then we came to the floor and we dropped off the Medicaid provisions. Now what we are trying to do, it seems to me, in a back-door way, is make very severe changes in Medicaid without us considering it a Medicaid bill. If we are dealing with Medicaid we get into all kind of different things. We get into the Boland amendment and matters we dealt with in the Finance Committee. But that is not the approach. Yes, it was very clear, we are severing the two: Welfare is here, Medicaid is here; we are dropping Medicaid off and sticking with welfare. Yet in one fell swoop here, because of the eligibility standards of AFDC, or cash assistance, Medicaid goes along with it. And you have to be very, very careful then. When you have dropped the major Medicaid portions of the bill, what are you going to do about this group that loses their Medicaid coverage, the ones I am talking about? It does not do any good to say that is all right, we will take care of those on the list now. What about in the future? Are we going to let a State just drop right down on its cash assistance way below the levels they are not permitted to go now--which is May 1, 1988--and then go right down? OK, that is welfare reform.”