GOP governors launch website criticizing Cordray
The Republican WASHINGTON — Governors Association has launched a website criticizing Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray for refusing to say whether he will run next year for governor of Ohio.
As a senior federal government official, Cordray is barred by the Hatch Act from taking “any active part” in political campaigns. He has repeatedly declined to say whether he will run for public office.
According to the RGA’s website NoComment Cordray.com, Cordray has taken action to prepare for a return to state politics.
As a former state attorney general, Cordray is regarded as one of the stronger Democratic possibilities for governor. His term as head of the consumer bureau expires next July.
Ohio would not face any federal financial cutbacks for federal children’s health insurance during the next two years if Congress approves a bipartisan compromise bill unveiled Monday.
The $9 billion measure, which would re-authorize for five years the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), would allow at least 210,000 low-income children in Ohio to keep their coverage through the end of 2019.
If the Senate and House approve the bill, the federal government would continue to pay 97 percent of Ohio’s costs to maintain the program before declining to 85 percent in 2020 and 74 percent in 2021 and 2022.
That means state lawmakers in Columbus will have to find the extra money by 2020 to keep the program at its current rate.
Before passage of the 2010 health law known as Obamacare, the federal government provided 74 percent of the costs of Ohio’s children’s insurance program. The 2010 law boosted that percentage to 97 percent, but the higher federal payments are scheduled to end by next week unless Congress acts.
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In a statement, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, one of the co-sponsors of the bill, said the bipartisan measure would give “Ohio families the assurance that their children’s healthcare will be protected for years to come.”
The Senate Finance Committee, whose members include Brown and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio, is expected to pass the bill and send it to the Senate floor. Portman has indicated he will support the measure.
CHIP was created in 1997 as a way to reduce the number of low-income children without health coverage.
HOW OHIO LAWMAKERS VOTED LAST WEEK
H.R. 2810 as amended. A bill to authorize national defense programs. Passed: 89-8
President Donald Trump has tapped Dana Baiocco, a 1998 graduate of Ohio University, for a seven-year term on the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Baiocco was born in Yorkville in Belmont County. After she graduated from Ohio, she earned a law degree from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.
She now lives in Boston with her husband and daughter. The Senate will need to confirm her nomination.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich took to CNN and MSNBC Wednesday to assail Senate Republicans for abandoning efforts to pass a bipartisan health care bill being drafted by Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington.
“We were starting to see the sun kind of peek through a little bit on Republicans and Democrats working together,” Kasich told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
Instead, Senate Republicans hope next week to push through a more conservative health plan that would dismantle much of the 2010 health law known as Obamacare and send billions of federal dollars to the states to design their own health systems.
“I don’t know whether you play ping-pong or not, when you hit the ball over the net, and the person hits the ball back,” Kasich said. “This is like a ping-pong game on health care and the losers in the game like that are the people.”
Kasich has criticized the Senate Republican bill co-sponsored by Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. A Kasich spokesman Tuesday said the bill would be “devastating to Ohio.”
Rep. Jim Renacci, R-Wadsworth, has introduced a resolution laying out 10 principles he wants in tax reform.
In his resolution, Renacci, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, argues that the 2.4 million word tax code is too complicated and time-consuming for the average American to understand.
Renacci wants to see a tax code that is easier to understand; raises the standard deduction, increases child tax credits and lowers tax rates; creates cuts that affect all individuals; eliminates the “death tax,” and encourages companies to bring their profits back home.
A House overhaul, Renacci says, would keep money in the pockets of “ordinary Americans,” as well as “prompt business investment, productivity gains, and increase output and wage growth.”
Renacci, a CPA, is running for governor.