Pearce vows to impose Medicaid work rule
Candidate says requirement would allow “dignity of work”
Republican Steve Pearce said Friday that he would immediately issue an executive order — if he’s elected governor — requiring able-bodied people without children to work if they receive Medicaid.
It would help return the “dignity of work” and the “power of earned success,” he said, to poor New Mexicans who rely on the government for health care.
“We should be encouraging less dependency on the government and more self sufficiency,” Pearce said Friday in a speech to business and community leaders gathered for a meeting of the nonpartisan Economic Forum of Albuquerque.
Pearce is competing with Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham in New Mexico’s race for governor. Both are giving up seats in Congress to run.
Pearce said Friday that he would promote apprenticeship programs for young people who don’t want to attend college immediately after high school.
And he said he would use “hands-on management” to ensure bureaucrats in state government aren’t holding up the permitting process for businesses that want to build in New Mexico. The state’s “hostility toward business,” he said, has driven away companies that want to build restaurants, apartments and gas stations.
He said he didn’t blame any political party in particular, and he didn’t criticize outgoing Republican Gov. Susana Martinez or Democratic legislative leaders by name.
“New Mexico has got everything it needs to succeed,” Pearce said. “We just haven’t had the leadership.”
In a speech to the Economic Forum last week, Lujan Grisham said she would pursue a bipartisan tax commission to simplify New Mexico’s tax code, change the procurement code to make it easier for local businesses to win government contracts and serve as an enthusiastic champion of New Mexico as a great place to do business.
A campaign spokesman said Friday that Lujan Grisham’s plans are much more detailed than Pearce’s.
“While Michelle Lujan Grisham has released over a dozen, in-depth policy plans for economic development, job creation, combatting poverty, and education, Steve Pearce still has failed to produce a single detailed plan,” spokesman James Hallinan said Friday. “We can only assume that he’ll follow the same failed economic policies of Susana Martinez coupled with his extreme Tea Party Republican agenda.”
Pearce on Friday said he would create a 50-year plan for business growth in the state, push to transform the Albuquerque airport into an international business hub and make New Mexico a national leader in renewable energy.
He described getting his first job outside the home at 9 years old as his family struggled with poverty. His first paycheck gave him “the understanding that hard work will get you almost anywhere you want to go,” Pearce said.
A work requirement, he said, would affect perhaps one-third of the Medicaid population, targeting “able-bodied” individuals who are “working age” without children. The state would help train them to get them back on their feet.