Monday, September 11, 2017

Dreamers

Dreamers

When D.C. Beckons
By Matt Murphy
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, SEPT. 8, 2017....With his purple tie knotted tightly, Gov. Charlie Baker flew to Washington this week hoping to bring his brand of bipartisanship to the polarized capital.

Recap and analysis of the week in state government.Few might have predicted, however, that the colors in Washington were already starting to bleed.

Ostensibly, the state Legislature and Congress both returned to work from a summer recess this week, but it was the gridlocked Congress - with an assist from President Donald Trump - that would make the breakthrough.

As state legislators eased into their post-Labor Day schedule (and that's being generous), Trump struck a debt ceiling deal with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to fund the government for three months and deliver billions in Hurricane Harvey relief funding.

Trump's shunning of Republican Congressional leaders to make a deal with the Democrats rattled Washington and seemed to put wind in the sails of the White House as they prepared to deal with another catastrophic hurricane - Irma - bearing down on South Florida.

The debt ceiling deal also distracted, if only for a fleeting moment, from the storm the president stirred up with his decision to phase out the immigration program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

The program created by Barack Obama through executive order allowed the so-called "Dreamers" who were brought to the country illegally by their parents when they were minors to apply for protected status that would allow them to go to school and work without fear of deportation.

Trump, through his Attorney General Jeff Sessions, challenged Congress over the next six months to enshrine DACA into law if they want it preserved, while Democrats and many Republicans, including Gov. Baker, derided the move as a cold-hearted play for the conservative base that would send immigrants in the United States through no fault of their own back into hiding.

Attorney General Maura Healey joined yet another multi-state lawsuit against the Trump administration to block the decision to end DACA, while advocate groups rallied at the State House and around Boston seeking leadership from the state to protect the futures of the Dreamers.

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It was in this atmosphere that Baker joined his fellow governors from Tennessee, Montana, Colorado and Utah in testifying before the Senate health committee on steps Congress could take to stabilize 
Obamacare health insurance markets in the wake of failed efforts to repeal the law.

Baker and the bipartisan cohort of governors told the Senate panel, headed by Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, that the single biggest thing they could do would be to ensure at least two years of funding for cost sharing reductions payments.

The CSR payments, used to keep patients out-of-pocket expenses down, were a part of the Affordable Care Act, but have been challenged in court by Republicans and dangled by Trump as a lever he could pull for force the collapse of Obamacare.

"I think it would be a bad idea," Baker told U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren about Trump's threat, responding to a softball lobbed across the plate by Massachusetts' senior senator in what sounded like a coordinated back-and-forth designed to bloody the president.

Baker sat in the middle of the five governors as the de facto leader of the pack. He was given ample time to wonk out on health care policy, and just enough time to score some political points back home.

Secretary of State William Galvin also had a mind to deliver a blow to the president when he testified back at the State House in support of a bill that would disqualify a candidate like Trump from the presidential ballot if they refused to release their tax returns.

Should legislative efforts to restrict ballot access in that way fail, a proposed ballot question to accomplish the same objective became one of 21 petitions to clear their first hurdle on the road to the 2018 ballot after being certified by Healey.

Pending massive signature gathering efforts, other petitions given the yellow light include proposals to lower the sales tax, raise the minimum wage from $11 to $15 and make paid family and medical leave the law the commonwealth.

Work leftover from the last round of initiative petitions in 2016 has now fallen into the lap Steve Hoffman, the new chair of the Cannabis Control Commission, who met the press this week for the first time.

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