Democrats say they won’t back emerging effort to expand NC gambling
RALEIGH, N.C. — The prospects of enacting soon an overdue North Carolina budget, permitting more state-sanctioned gambling and implementing Medicaid expansion stayed uncertain this week as Republicans suggested dividing the topics between two bills. But most Democratic colleagues sound unwilling to provide the necessary votes.
Action for passing a two-year state government spending plan idled last week when House Republicans said they didn’t have enough votes to pass the budget on their own if it contained language that would authorize four additional casinos and legalize video gambling machines statewide.
Senate leader Phil Berger said House leaders should have gone forward with votes on the budget containing the casinos and video machines because a majority of House Republicans still supported them.
But a proposal surfaced over the weekend would place the gambling expansion and language implementing Medicaid expansion together in the same bill that would be voted on later this week. And a separate budget bill, with the gambling that a lot of Republicans opposed taken out, would be voted on separately, Rep. Jason Saine of Lincoln County, the House’s top budget writer, told media outlets.
Through a spokesperson, Berger’s office said it had no information to offer on the path forward.
A state law that Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper signed in March directing the state to offer Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of low-income adults required the budget’s passage before expansion could be carried out. A budget was supposed to be in place July 1, and Medicaid expansion is among the top priorities for Cooper and Democrats.
But the new proposal, unveiled late Monday, would instead implement expansion if this new gambling measure became law.
While Republicans have narrow veto-proof majorities in each chamber, opposition by social conservatives to gambling or the lack of public discussion on the gambling provisions makes Democratic assistance likely to get them approved. So it appears some Republican leaders are hopeful enough Democrats would vote for a
standalone bill authorizing Medicaid expansion even if it contained the gambling.
Democrats seem mostly unified against the maneuvering so far.
Cooper wrote over the weekend that the proposal pairing Medicaid expansion and gambling was “the most brutally dishonest legislative scheme I’ve seen in my 3+ decades.”
“People are right to be suspicious,” Cooper wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Something has a grip on Republican leaders and it’s not the people of NC.”