AUGUSTA – Leaders of the Legislature’s Republican majority said Thursday a budget proposal meant to solve a $83 million budget gap in the Department of Health and Human Services will also honor a previous commitment to restore $5 million in state funding to cities.

The money helps cities like Lewiston cover costs for their general assistance programs and was vetoed by Gov. Paul LePage after the state’s budget package was passed by the Legislature in April.

Senate President Kevin Raye, R-Perry, and House Speaker Robert Nutting, R-Oakland, briefed statehouse reporters just prior to a meeting of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee Thursday morning.

The budget proposal outlined by Raye and Nutting would preserve key portions of several DHHS programs that Democrats had said would be cut, including a prescription drug program for low-income elderly.

“It rejects deep cuts to the Drugs for the Elderly program that would have affected 65,000 elderly Mainers who also get Medicare Part D,” Raye said. “Our plan affects just 1,500 people on the very top end of the income guidelines.”

The proposal also relaunches a debate over reducing the income tax on retirement pensions in an attempt to kept the state’s oldest citizens from fleeing the state, Raye said.

Raye and Nutting said the Republican proposal will remove 19- and 20-year-olds from the state’s low-income health insurance program, MaineCare.

MaineCare is funded in part with federal Medicare money, and Raye and Nutting said expansions of the program to include more and more Mainers over the years were unsustainable.

“Perhaps the most compelling statistic is that by 2009, Maine’s per capita Medicaid cost was $1,895 per person, compared to an average of just $1,187 in other states,” Raye said. “Mainers cannot afford costs that are 60 percent above the national average.”

The proposal as outlined seems to reject several cuts suggested by LePage late last week, but Nutting said he believed the majority had made enough concessions to get the governor’s approval.

Nutting also charged Democrats with complaining about the proposals to solve the budget gap without offering any solutions of their own.

“They have not shared their ideas as to how to solve this problem,” Nutting said. “Instead they want to continue on the path that they have traveled for the past 40 years, where they pushed off the problem for the next Legislature and the next generation of Mainers to deal with.”

Nutting emphasized that Republicans intend to pass a proposal out of the Appropriations Committee Thursday and send it to the full Legislature for approval at next week’s special session.

Nutting said there have been no discussions with the minority Democrats about veto overrides if LePage line-item vetoes parts of the supplemental budget, as he did in April.

Nutting said he couldn’t speculate on what LePage would or would not do.

But later Thursday Adrienne Bennett, the press secretary for LePage, said because the Republican proposal also provides funding to help pay down the state’s debt to hospitals and achieves on-going savings in DHHS going in to the future the governor was encouraged.

“This proposal moves us well towards what has long been part of the governor’s goals,” Bennett said. “For the state to spend wisely and for us to pay our bills.”

She said the Republican plan matches LePage’s promise to protect services for the state’s most vulnerable and does so in a responsible manner.

If the final bill that comes out of the Legislature next week looks like the GOP proposal it was unlikely the governor would veto any parts of it, Bennett said.

Bennett also said that the governor did not necessarily like the restoration of the general assistance funding for cities but it was a compromise he could accept.

She noted reducing the level of state spending for general assistance was still a goal for the administration and that she expected it would come up again when the Legislature convenes in January of 2013.

Democrats responded saying the Republican proposals still put too many people in jeopardy.  Rep. Peggy Rotundo, D – Lewiston called the proposal, “extreme and irresponsible.”

Rotundo, the lead House Democrat on the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee said the reduction in eligibility for senior drug programs and the removal of 19 to 20 -year-olds, among other things in the proposal would hurt Maine’s vulnerable.

She said she couldn’t accept the proposal which cuts taxes for some while eliminating services for others.

“The Republicans are making dangerous cuts that will harm seniors, children, and people with disabilities, while passing more unfunded tax cuts,” Rotundo said.

sthistle@sunjournal.com

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