Georgia Tipsheet

Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, invalidating the controversial proof of citizenship requirement for potential voters in Arizona’s controversial immigration law, may well have an impact that transcends into Georgia, which has similar laws on its books.

Yet, according to the AJC, Peach State elected officials are taking a wait and see tact in addressing any ramifications.

“We cannot comment on the ramifications for Georgia’s law until we’ve had a chance to fully review the ruling,” stated Lauren Kane, a spokesperson for Attorney General Sam Olens.

Secretary of State Brian Kemp conveyed disappointment in the decision, saying that “states’ control over elections would be diminished in law and practice.”

Olens previously joined AGs from Texas, Michigan, Kansas, and Oklahoma in penning a brief to the high court arguing for a ruling in favor of the law.

Opponents of the Arizona provision praised the decision, further arguing it would block efforts at enforcing Georgia’s law. Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice stated that “to the extent that Georgia or any other state requires proof of citizenship in order to be registered using the federal voter registration form, that requirement is not valid under federal law.”

The 7-2 vote tossing the provision from Arizona’s voter law has been met with swift rebuke from Republicans in both the House and Senate; several lawmakers introduced legislation that would permit states to request such information from those looking to register to vote.

Rep. Phil Gingrey, also running for Georgia’s open Senate seat, proposed such a measure, entitled the Securing America’s Fair Elections Act, an amendment to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

“Georgia and other states have the right—and the responsibility—to enact laws that will preserve the integrity of our elections system. This legislation will help safeguard that right,” he stated via press release.

Despite praise from opponents of such voter registration laws, Phil Kent, spokesman for Americans for Immigration Control, argued that it left the requirements intact.

“Arizona and Georgia can still deny voter registration to anyone who submits a federal form if [they have] other information, such as a state form, that establishes the voter’s ineligibility,” he stated, per the AJC’s report.

-Brandon Howell

The furious response of Republican governors nationwide to the U.S. Supreme Court’s health care ruling last week has left Georgia’s chief executive one of the odd men out as state governments from Florida to Wisconsin forswear a federally prescribed expansion of Medicaid rolls.

The high court’s decision that federal lawmakers lacked the authority to legislative punitive remedies to those states that reject the expansion effort–lower enrollment hurdles in the Affordable Care Act would extend the franchise to some 32 million Americans according to estimates–has set off a chain reaction of GOP governors abandoning the overhaul.

But even as Georgia Governor Nathan Deal has expressed reservations over the costs associated with the unprecedented expansion, he remains one of the increasingly few who have not withdrawn their state from participation.

The controversial federal health care law stipulated an expansion of Medicaid eligibility guidelines jointly underwritten by state and federal tax dollars. The federal government would own 100 percent of the costs for the first three years, but state coffers would begin contributing 10 percent to the effort thereafter. (The law originally included a provision that punished those states that failed to comply, stripping them of already-appropriated Medicaid funds.)

That huge new outlay, most GOP governors say, is simply too great a burden on state budgets. Participation no longer mandated, simply put: few are.

Republicans Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida, Dave Heineman of Nebraska have all opted out. Other GOP guvs–like those in Mississippi, Maine and New Jersey–have at least said they are reluctant to participate.

Federal legislators and regulators failed to anticipate the direction of Supreme Court’s health care opinion last week, so states face no deadline to decide. Medicaid directors are not even certain if states can drop out after first enlisting.

The state’s Democratic Congressional delegation is leaning hard on Deal to adopt the new guidelines. Reps. John Lewis, David Scott, Sanford Bishop and Hank Johnson told the governor in a Friday letter that the expansion was “the right thing to do” for the state.

But all indications are that Georgia–one of 26 states whose challenge the court heard–will delay the tough call until at least the fall.

- James Richardson

A pair of Georgia Republican pols had historic, if depressing, vantages of today’s Supreme Court decision in which key elements of President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform were upheld, planted in the two epicenters–the courtroom where the ruling was delivered, and the hotel room of Republicans’ choice for the White House–of the affair.

Roswell Congressman Tom Price was posted inside the high court by Speaker John Boehner, while Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens was reportedly in the Washington hotel suite of GOP’er Mitt Romney as the much-anticipated opinion was released.

A Romney aide confirmed to Tipsheet Olens was in the company of Romney, but as much was clear when the attorney general retweeted a message by an editor at the Boston Globe.

RT @mviser: Romney watched Supreme Court decision from his Washington Hilton hotel room with staff and Georgia AG Sam Olens, aide says.

— Glen Johnson (@globeglen) June 28, 2012

In spite of their red-letter postings, both were deeply frustrated with the court’s decision to leave the legislation largely intact.

“I call on Congress to act swiftly, repeal the law and replace it with real reform that respects the Constitution as written,” Olens, who was among 26 state chief law enforcement officers who challenged the legislation, said in a joint press release Thursday with Governor Nathan Deal.

Price, himself an orthopedic surgeon, said today’s ruling established a “dangerous precedent” that threatens personal freedom. “We have no choice but to exercise every possible legislation option to repeal this disastrous law,” he said, “and the American people should know that House Republicans will continue to advocate on their behalf to restore personal control over health care decisions.”

- James Richardson

Even as the U.S. Supreme Court restricted on Thursday the Medicaid expansion provision in the Affordable Care Act, the Georgia agency tasked with oversight of the health program announced today it had canceled its next monthly board meeting for a lack of consequential considerations.

The Department of Community Health emailed a notice Thursday morning, just minutes after the court had made public its health care decision, that a “sparse agenda” had precipitated the canceling of its July meeting. The email, sent by the executive assistant to the commissioner, said its next meeting would be held in August.

An incredulous Tipsheet source forwarded the two-sentence memorandum, expressing concern how “the board with responsibility for implementing Medicaid changes” could announce it was “canceling its July meeting because of a sparse agenda.”

A DCH press officer confirmed the meeting had been cancelled, but offered no more explanation as to why.

The recent health care law, which largely cleared a critical judicial hurdle today, stipulated an expansion of Medicaid eligibility guidelines underwritten by more tax dollars, first absorbed by the federal government and later by states. By 2020, individual state coffers would be ponying up ten percent of costs associated with the expansion.

Those states that refused cooperation would be stripped of existing federal funding.

Georgia’s Medicaid program, which DCH administers, consumes $21 million in state and federal funds per day. (The already-cash-strapped program has recently begun reorganizing the safety net for the state’s underserved population as it wrangles an expected annual deficit of more than $600 million by 2015.)

But the Supreme Court ruled today that while it was within the authority of Congress to expand Medicaid’s enrollment roster, it lacked the authority to enforce a punitive provision on those state’s that failed to acquiesce. “What Congress is not free to do is penalize states that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

State health chiefs from Washington State to Florida are already scrambling to reassess obligations in the wake in the ruling. But here in Georgia, the agenda is sparse.

- James Richardson

Tipsheet contributor Brandon Howell relays at the Daily Caller today the political vulnerabilities implicit in the Supreme Court’s looming health care opinion for incumbent moderate Democrats:

As lawmakers, activists, hacks and flacks alike wait with bated breath for the Supreme Court’s imminent opinion on the constitutionality of the Democrats’ health care law, expected to be revealed on Thursday, Washington’s lingering crop of Blue Dog Democrats are laying the markers for rough re-election bids.

Some are weighing whether to attack the court or the conservatives who fomented the decision, but all are increasingly desperate to move past it. The Blue Dogs were complicit in Obamacare’s adoption, and any reminder of that complicity is a nuisance to their efforts to feign moderation.

No one understands this better than embattled Georgia Congressman John Barrow. Facing a redrawn district that favors Republicans (just 44% of its vote went to Obama in 2008), Barrow is struggling to balance the liberal interests backing his campaign with the political realities of rural Georgia. Like former Blue Dog Jim Marshall, who represented a neighboring Georgia district until his defeat in 2010 by Republican Austin Scott, Barrow voted against Obamacare but has refused to say that he will vote to repeal it. Scott defeated Marshall in a district that gave a similar percentage of the vote to Obama in 2008, and he did so by vowing to fight for Obamacare’s repeal and railing against Marshall’s vote for the 2009 stimulus package. In all likelihood, Barrow will face a similar refrain this fall.

Read the item in full at theDC.