Medicaid expansion will get a vote in the Kansas Senate but not the House. Here's why.

Gov. Laura Kelly has renewed her Medicaid expansion campaign, attempting to build public pressure ahead of a vote in one chamber of the Kansas Legislature.

"I urge Kansans in every corner of the state to write, call, or meet with their legislators," Kelly said in a statement. "Tell them Medicaid expansion must be debated and passed now. Let them know how critical this is for your family and your communities."

While the Senate will have a vote when lawmakers returns next week from a three-week break, a similar move has been preempted in the House.

Senate will vote on whether to allow full debate on Medicaid expansion

The Senate will vote April 26 on whether to pull Senate Bill 355 out of the chamber's public health committee, setting up a full debate and vote on the bill. If the motion fails, there won't be a debate, because the rules prohibit debate on the motion itself.

While the committee held an informational hearing on Medicaid expansion last month, it never had a hearing specifically on that bill.

Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, D-Lenexa, made the motion for the procedural move on the Legislature's last day of regular session, setting the stage for a vote on the first full day of veto session.

"Kansans deserve to know where their legislators stand on Medicaid expansion. So to quote Beyonce: 'Don’t be a (expletive), come take it to the floor now,'" Sykes said, an apparent reference to the chorus of Beyonce's new country song, "Texas Hold 'Em."

Why the House can't pull Medicaid expansion bills out of committee

House Democrats cannot try a similar move to withdraw a Medicaid expansion bill out of committee.

That's because House Republican leadership has moved House Bill 2556 and House Bill 2415 — Kelly's 2024 Medicaid expansion plan and her 2023 version — around to different committees.

Under House rules, a motion to withdraw a bill from committee can only be made after the bill has sat in committee for more than 10 days. Senate rules don't have a similar requirement.

The House health committee held a hearing March 20 on HB 2556. The next day, Democrats failed to advance the bill to the floor when none of the Republicans on the committee voted for it. The day after that, the bill was withdrawn from that committee and referred to another.

Less than 10 days after that, it was again referred back to the health committee. Now, with less than 10 session days between that move and the scheduled end of the legislative session, Medicaid expansion supporters can't use that procedural move to force a vote.

While there may be other procedural tactics Democrats can try, the most straightforward one is off the table.

Will Lawrence, the governor's chief of staff, blamed House Speaker Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita, and House Majority Leader Chris Croft, R-Overland Park, for preventing a vote.

"House Republican leadership's tactics clearly indicate they know what I know: There are more than enough votes to pass Medicaid expansion," Lawrence said in a statement. "When presented with the facts, Kansans across the political spectrum, including the majority of Republican primary voters, agree that we must expand Medicaid.

"Speaker Hawkins and Majority Leader Croft keep sending our tax dollars to California and New York instead of investing in working Kansans who need access to affordable health care. It is time to move beyond politics and do the right thing."

In a statement, Hawkins pointed to the health committee's decision not to advance the bill.

"Governor Kelly asked for a hearing and a vote on Medicaid expansion," Hawkins said. "A lengthy hearing was held and the committee voted. Medicaid expansion was overwhelmingly rejected in that vote.

"When bills are voted down in committee they do not go to the floor. This is legislation 101 and Governor Kelly knows this having served in the legislature for 14 years. If she's forgotten in the past six years I recommend she refresh herself by watching Schoolhouse Rock."

What have House Democrats done on Medicaid expansion this session?

Democrats were discouraged from attempting to make moves earlier in the session.

In February, House health committee chair Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita, publicly promised to hold a hearing on expanding Medicaid. But she did not set a specific date, saying it would be sometime after the Legislature's Feb. 23 turnaround deadline.

A hearing had not yet been scheduled as of March 7. In committee that day, Rep. Lindsay Vaughn, D-Overland Park, motioned to gut-and-go on an unrelated bill by replacing its contents with Medicaid expansion.

"We have failed to have a hearing on Medicaid expansion to date, even though that's something we've been promised," she said.

Landwehr said she took offense to Vaughn's comments and threatened to not hold a formal hearing if Vaughn proceeded with her motion, which Vaughn subsequently withdrew.

The House did have a related floor vote earlier this session, the day before the committee hearings.

When debating the House budget plan on March 19, Rep. Henry Helgerson, D-Eastborough, proposed a sweeping amendment that added back in several items that legislators had cut from the governor's budget proposal, including Medicaid expansion.

His amendment failed 38-78, with two Republicans siding with all but one of the present Democrats.

The last time the House had a floor vote was last session, when Democrats tried to amend Medicaid expansion into a food stamp work requirement bill. Republicans voted it down by upholding a ruling that it was not germane, despite Republican leadership indicating earlier in the day that it would be germane.

Kelly wants to build public pressure for Senate vote

Ahead of the Senate vote, Kelly has relaunched her statewide Medicaid expansion from last fall, which she dubbed the "Healthy Workers, Healthy Economy" tour. Republican leadership has previously derided it as the "Governor's Welfare Express Tour."

The governor said her bill "would increase access to health care for 150,000 Kansans while injecting $1.2 billion in annual federal funding into Kansas' economy and creating 23,000 new jobs."

Kelly restarted the campaign with a visit to HaysMed. The CEO of the rural hospital had testified in the Senate hearing in support of expanding Medicaid.

Meanwhile, Hawkins made a trip of his own to rural northwest Kansas, speaking on Medicaid expansion at an event in Plainville.

"Contrary to what proponents claim, expanding Medicaid to able-bodied adults won't save rural hospitals, will likely cause major state budget shortfalls, and will siphon resources away from our truly needy, elderly, and disabled populations," he said in a newsletter after the event.

Kelly added another stop at the Shawnee County Jail on Tuesday, where an economist and county government officials suggested expanding Medicaid would result in lower local property taxes, while Valeo Behavioral Health Care staff talked about mental health treatment.

More: Medicaid expansion is Laura Kelly's top priority. Can her sixth try pass the Legislature?

Is there still a chance for Medicaid expansion this year?

For the Medicaid expansion bill to advance in the Senate, Democrats would need to pick up the support of more than half of the Republicans.

Democrats have 11 members, but they need 24 votes for the pulling motion to succeed. But that only places the bill on general orders. To force a full debate and vote on the bill, they would need 27 votes — a two-thirds supermajority.

Kelly said it comes down to "whether or not enough legislators — who I truly do believe want to take a vote on Medicaid expansion, and most of them want to vote to expand Medicaid — it's just whether or not they're willing to sort of coalesce and put the pressure on to deliver the votes to make that debate vote happen."

While the Senate faces bleak odds, House Minority Leader Vic Miller, D-Topeka, said, "It's going to be a rougher road on the House side."

House Democrats haven't announced any plans to try to force a vote before the end of session. Miller said they will wait and see what happens in the Senate.

Miller, who was the only legislator in attendance at Kelly's Medicaid expansion event, told reporters afterward that if the Senate does muster the votes to pass the bill, "Maybe that might give us the necessary momentum on the House side."

"But there's only 40 of us," Miller said of Democrats. "There's 85 Republicans. It's going to take a lot of House Republicans recognizing and standing up, putting truth to power before it's going to come out of the House. The speaker has made it clear he'll do anything he has to to suppress the debate and the vote. I'm not optimistic there are that many Republicans that have the spine to take on the speaker, even with the overwhelming popularity of the issue."

Kansas Republican Party chairman Mike Brown doesn't think expansion is popular.

"This ultra-liberal mess of a Senator wants to try, again, to force Medicaid Expansion on Kansans against their will," he wrote about Sykes and her motion in an April 12 newsletter. "This is a long-settled issue and KANSANS DO NOT WANT MEDICAID EXPANSION no matter how many times the progressive liberal loons drag it back up. Period."

He likewise urged opponents to contact their legislators.

As a political issue, Miller credited support by Democrats and opposition from GOP leadership for Democratic gains in House seats from Johnson County. He expects that to continue this fall.

"We're going to pick up some more seats in the House on this issue," he said.

While Kelly has credited her more political approach this year with leading to the first hearings in four years, she bristled at the suggestion that the Senate's vote is more about getting legislators on record ahead of 2024 elections.

"This is my sixth proposal, I didn't come up with this yesterday because it's an election year," she said. "This is just more of what we need. If this is what has to be done to get that debate and vote on Medicaid expansion, then this is what we do. Whether it's an election year or not is irrelevant."

More: Here's how $1M fundraising haul of Laura Kelly's PAC could break supermajority in Kansas

Jason Alatidd is a Statehouse reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at jalatidd@gannett.com. Follow him on X @Jason_Alatidd.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Medicaid expansion votes run into politics in Kansas Legislature