So THAT'S where all the money went in Virginia

The Gilmore-Warner Senate debate this morning will certainly have plenty of material for the Warnerese-English translator, but there was one point of disagreement that piqued my curiosity (excerpt from Vivian Paige, emphasis added):

Warner: Let’s revisit one of the issues that was one of the ideological hot buttons for you, Jim. It was your reluctance to support any kind of children’s health insurance program. Even though the legislature said please let’s put in place this children’s health insurance program you said it offended your philosophical positions. Instead Virginia during your term sent back 56 million in federal dollars that were supposed to come into Virginia that instead got spent in other states to sign up kids for children’s health insurance. Jim was that the right decision, to not sign up those kids for children’s health insurance?

Gilmore: Here’s the answer, Mark. We established that FAMIS program and started it, and we actually created a program that was correct philosophically and in terms of what was best for families. It was a private health insurance, families had to have some responsibility of their own and pay a co-payment. It was not a welfare program, and gave people the dignity to know that they were taking care of themselves with the assistance of a state program like FAMIS. But when Mark Warner came in he concluded that the measure of success was simply putting people on a government welfare program and as a result he lowered the thresholds and then signed everybody up into Medicaid. And what happened was this program went up because everybody went on Medicaid the numbers on Medicaid went up. And that’s what the difference is that he hasn’t told you today. But it reflective of something. And the question is, what are the health care policies that we’re going to face in the United States Senate. Barack Obama has come forward with a health care plan that is gonna say that employers have to pay to play and that in fact they have to offer a certain type of program or they will be taxed if they are an employer, and government will impose that on you. It says that insurance companies have to offer particular kinds of benefits and control certain types of programs. And then for extra measure he puts in a government-controlled program which will squeeze out private insurance. And in fact the more Medicaid goes up like Mark’s type of program, the harder it is on private insurance options. And so the question I’ve got for you Mark, when you get to the United States Senate are you going to be supporting Barack Obama’s health care program, or will you be supporting John McCain and myself, who want to put in place a more private kind of program, a private program that creates associations and more opportunities for private care, and more opportunities for guaranteed admission into private programs, so that in fact you can utilize the private sector, or you gonna go to in fact this type of government control that Barack Obama would like to do? And I think
that’s the fundamental question that we have to ask and I think we already know the answer, because when the time came on SCHIP and FAMIS, you put ‘em in a government program.

Now, as you can see, this is a serious ideological difference, but after noticing that, another thought quickly came into my head - if Warner expanded Medicaid like that, it should show up in budget numbers. So, after doing some digging, I found out where Medicaid spending shows up in the budget (Department of Medical Assistance Services), and started looking at the changes from budget to budget. Here's what I found (Dept. of Planning and Budget):

Fiscal Year DMAS Spending Increase
2003 $3,719,897,469 13.7%
2004 $4,030,280,698 8.3%
2005 $4,563,474,648 13.2%
2006 $4,921,099,602 7.8%
2007 $5,320,510,865 8.1%
2008 $5,662,663,577 6.4%
2009 (Projected) $5,841,781,048 3.2%
2010 (Projected) $6,165,171,257 5.5%

As you can see, the increases were quite dramatic during Warner's term (FY2003-FY2006). Certainly, Warner's decision to turn Gilmore's private-insurance plan into another part Medicaid had something to do with that. The question is, how much?

Well, while it's impossible to know the exact budgetary numbers if Gilmore's plan had been maintained, I calculated what the increases would have been if the numbers were just held to population growth (averaged at 1.2% a year) and inflation. I should note that I did not use the regular CPI, but the health care CPI as calculated by the federal Department of Health and Human Services. The resulting numbers were as follows:

Fiscal Year Health Care Inf. Pop. Growth Spending growth Proj. Spending Diff. from Actual
2003 4.6% 1.2% 5.9% $3,463,755,841 $256,141,628
2004 4.6% 1.2% 5.9% $3,666,565,673 $363,715,025
2005 4.0% 1.2% 5.2% $3,858,987,039 $704,487,609
2006 4.4% 1.2% 5.7% $4,077,127,859 $843,971,743
2007 4.2% 1.2% 5.5% $4,299,347,635 $1,021,163,230
2008 4.0% 1.2% 5.2% $4,524,977,399 $1,137,686,178
2009 Budget # used 3.2% $4,668,108,365 $1,173,672,683
2010 Budget # used 5.5% $4,926,526,222 $1,238,645,035

The numbers are mind-boggling. The extra $1.55 billion for FY05-06 is more than Warner's entire tax hike. Over the entire eight years, the difference is $6.74 billion - $2.2B more than raised by Warner's tax hike over that six year period. Imagine how that $2.2 million could have been improved, say, our transportation network.

So, if you want to know why your taxes went up, and (for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads) why you're snarled in traffic, today's debate gave the answer: it was so Mark Warner could knock out low-income private health insurance and expand government controlled health care.

Do we really want to reward the author of this costly and ideological mistake with a seat in the U.S. Senate? Shouldn't we instead choose the fellow who tried to prevent this budget-buster?

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal