While Kasich and Snyder are the first GOP governors to speak out, others could follow. Because of the party’s success in state-level elections during the Obama era, there are Republican governors in two-thirds of the states, including more than a dozen that expanded Medicaid. Unlike Kasich and Snyder, some GOP governors, like Asa Hutchinson in Arkansas, inherited Medicaid expansions that were initiated by a Democratic predecessor. Hutchinson has made clear that he opposed Obamacare, and he’s pushing the incoming Trump administration to allow Arkansas to tighten eligibility rules for Medicaid. “We have to work with what we have right now,”said his spokesman, J.R. Davis. As for what Congress might do, Hutchinson is in wait-and-see mode. “You don’t want to overreact,” Davis said.
Will Republican governors have any influence over their GOP colleagues in Washington? “On the margins, a little bit,” predicted Doug Heye, a party strategist who served as a top aide to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Governors tend to make their voices heard in one-on-one conversations with members of their state delegations. So Kasich would likely try to lobby Senator Rob Portman or Representative Pat Tiberi, a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee. (The governor might have had more success a couple years ago, when Ohio’s own John Boehner was still speaker.) And Snyder would have to lean on Representative Fred Upton, who until last month served as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid.
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