Monday, February 22, 2010

Gregoire: 'Put Things Up For A Vote'

By Brian Friel  

Gov. Christine Gregoire

Washington Democrat

For Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington, stimulus money is vital to keeping her state's services going. "When that money all goes away for education, for our teachers, for our law enforcement community, for our firefighters, for our Medicaid population, we will literally fall off a cliff financially," she told National Journal on Saturday at the winter meeting of the National Governors Association.

The Democrat took exception to Republicans praising the local effects of stimulus funding after opposing the spending a year ago. The best way to relieve partisan gridlock on the Hill, she said, is to "put things up to a vote."

"The American people want action. What they've seen is inaction," she said. "They need to have an understanding now of why there's inaction."

Edited excerpts of the interview follow.

NJ: What do you think Washington could learn from the states to get things moving on health care?

Gregoire: What I think we focused on was a lot of health care insurance reform, and I think governors want health care reform. So for example, fee for service in Medicaid. We are forcing doctors to bring patients back in order that they'll be able to get sufficient reimbursement. No matter the fact the patient coming back really is not for the patient's purposes, but for billing purposes, as opposed to paying based on the service provided whether the patient got a good outcome. That's the kind of dialogue governors are having around the country, where we can drive up the quality of health care and drive down the costs at the same time.

NJ: Can you talk about the impact of the funding cliff with the stimulus running out at the end of December -- on Medicaid in particular, but in general, the stimulus running out?

Gregoire: Well, I'll give you a brief picture of Washington state. Last year as we came into our two-year budget, we had a $9 billion shortfall, 9.2. We thought we had survived it, we didn't raise taxes, we were pretty proud of what we'd been able to do. And now coming into our off-year budget, we have a $2.8 billion shortfall. So, the total is $12 billion out of a $31 billion budget. That shows you how difficult. How did we survive it? We survived it because of federal stimulus dollars. The supplemental monies that were given to us for Medicaid populations. Now, when that money all goes away for education, for our teachers, for our law enforcement community, for our firefighters, for our Medicaid population, we will literally fall off a cliff financially.

NJ: So do you think tax increases are kind of unavoidable at this point?

Gregoire: They are in my state. I'm without a choice now. I can't leave people without hospice care. I can't leave 50,000 at-risk moms without maternity care. Those are the kinds of things I'd have to cut if I didn't look to new revenue.

NJ: Just turning to a different subject, which is energy, another area that Washington has struggled to do something with, can you talk about your own experiences in pushing climate change legislation and acting with your executive powers?

Gregoire: I had a climate change bill. We'd been working on this for years. And I had a climate change bill before my legislature last session. And, really, it passed out of the House. I had enough votes to have it come out of the Senate, and the clock ran out. It wasn't time to get it on the floor for the vote. So I exercised my executive powers, and I issued an executive order that embraced virtually everything that I had in the bill. But I did so under my signature without legislation. Now, there are those who have said I may not have had the power. In fact, as a former three-term attorney general, there's no question I do have the power. We're preparing ourselves in trying to inform the debate out of our experience and example. We set a goal of not only reducing greenhouse gases, but also increasing the number of -- we call them green-collar jobs, jobs relating to energy. And we set a goal that by 2020, we'd have 25,000 of those kinds of jobs. Within a couple of years, we have almost 50,000.

NJ: What would your advice be to President Obama? Because he's been getting a lot of pressure to pull back from moving himself on greenhouse gas regulation.

Gregoire: My advice to him is, we may not get everything that we want now, but we ought to be working bipartisan with Senators [Joe] Lieberman and [John] Kerry and [Lindsey] Graham. And take up what was passed by the House, see if we can't get a bipartisan bill out of the Senate, and get going.

NJ: On energy, on health care, on jobs, the bipartisanship just doesn't seem to be there. So do Democrats need to trim their sails and do something that can gain Republican support, or should they find a way to move forward on things, even if it means without Republican support?

Gregoire: I say put them up for a vote. You know, it's interesting that on federal stimulus packages where Republicans have voted no, they're there when the shovel goes into the ground. They're there to cut the ribbon. Can't have it both ways. Can't. So I say put things up for a vote. The American people want action. What they've seen is inaction. They need to have an understanding now of why there's inaction. So put things up to a vote. Let's see who votes for what they want and let's see who votes against it.

NJ: What's one or two things that you would love to see Washington do either on jobs or on housing to really help the citizens of Washington state?

Gregoire: To me, the way out of this recession is the creation of jobs. And about 65 percent of the jobs in my state are small business. They rely on their community banks for credit to stock their shelves or make their payroll. They have forever. That's nothing new. But those community banks now are not lending. So I think one of the most important things a jobs bill can do is somewhat akin to what the president has offered up: $30 billion to go out to those community banks as an incentive for them to loan to those small businesses, and the more they loan, and credibly so, they reduce their interest rate on the return that the bank has to pay the federal government on the loan and can get to as low as 1 percent.