Jill Vogel dumps on her colleagues for not supporting Medicaid Expansion budget

After roiling supporters with her vote yesterday on Medicaid expansion, Sen. Jill Vogel (R-Fauquier) today decided she needed to try to deflect some of the heat she’s getting. After all, Vogel just spent the better part of the last two years campaigning for Lieutenant Governor and carefully leading gullible people to believe she was a conservative. Her alleged opposition to Obamacare in Virginia, and her alleged understanding of the negative fiscal and moral implications of Medicaid expansion, played a large role in that.

It is therefore understandable that her supporters felt betrayed by her vote. Because they were.

So, Sen. Vogel is now in damage control mode. But she’s not doing a very good job of it. The first rule when you find yourself in a hole: stop digging.

In a lengthy email to supporters this afternoon Vogel instead dug the hole a little deeper. I’ve pasted the full text of the email below, but here’s the essence of it:

Vogel reminds us the she voted against Medicaid expansion in the past. She even goes so far as to say that “there is no ambiguity about where I have been regarding concerns about expanding that program,” and that she has previously “expressed my grave concerns” about the fiscal impact.

And then there is the pivot. Everyone remembers the old saying that everything before the word “but” is #*!$. With Vogel, it’s no different (except she uses “However”). Here’s the guts of her message:

“However, Medicaid is merely one part of this budget and as negotiations progressed I pressed for many important things to be included in the budget that were very important to me and to my district. To succeed in getting good measures included and then to vote against them is both negotiating in bad faith and shows a total lack of integrity. The people of my district elected me to work in their best interest. For the greater good, we should pass a budget before the nearing deadline and not shut down government.”

(Emphasis is mine). That’s right…she said that working successfully to get good things in the budget means that you have a “total lack of integrity” if you end up voting against it, regardless of whether it’s loaded down with stuff you say you oppose. She goes on to cite some of the good stuff in the budget, including funding for a judgeship in Loudoun that she and Sen. Dick Black (R-Loudoun) worked for.

So, Sen. Vogel apparently believes Dick Black lacks integrity for voting against the budget. Presumably also every other one of her colleagues who voted against it who also had a positive impact on what’s in the budget. Astounding.

Further, Vogel says she would have been negotiating in bad faith not to vote for it. Of course, Sen. Vogel, it shows a lot of bad faith to your voters–those who re-elected you on your supposedly proud and steadfast opposition to Medicaid expansion, and to all those supporters of yours who worked so hard to try to get you elected when you voted for that budget. But the only way it would show bad faith to vote against that budget would have been if you had made a deal to vote for Medicaid expansion in return for something you wanted.  Is that what you meant by bad faith?  What did you get in exchange for betraying your supporters?

In any case, your supporters (and, I gather, your Republican colleagues) are disappointed, and will have long memories.  To say the least.

For everyone else, here’s the whole email:

Dear Friend,

The Senate finally completed our budget late yesterday. We have been hard at work since January and no one expected that we would be in session until almost June to finish the process.

This week’s votes started on Tuesday when the Senate Finance Committee met in a contentious meeting to consider competing budget proposals—a House budget proposal that included money for Medicaid expansion and our Senate budget proposal that did not.

I voted for the clean Senate budget and stood by those votes through the process. It was a budget that I was proud of and it was a product that many of us had worked on for more than a year.

However, as we had learned weeks before, we did not have the votes to pass the Senate budget out of the full Senate. Yesterday, as anticipated, once the Senate’s version got to the floor, opponents of that bill voted to substitute the House bill. Again I voted for our Senate bill and then we moved on to votes on the House substitute.

Hours of debate followed on individual parts of the bill, mostly on the healthcare components. Individual members who opposed Medicaid had the opportunity to pull the Medicaid sections out of the budget and vote for or against Medicaid and for or against separate reform measures. Many amendments were offered on countless other sections of the budget and recorded votes were taken on each of those actions.

In the end, I voted with the majority of Senate Republicans on the votes against expansion and for additional reforms. However, I voted for the final budget.

For those who are critical of Medicaid in this budget, rest assured that there is no ambiguity about where I have been regarding concerns about expanding that program. In previous legislative updates I have laid out the economics of expansion and expressed my grave concerns about the long- term fiscal impact.

However, Medicaid is merely one part of this budget and as negotiations progressed I pressed for many important things to be included in the budget that were very important to me and to my district. To succeed in getting good measures included and then to vote against them is both negotiating in bad faith and shows a total lack of integrity. The people of my district elected me to work in their best interest. For the greater good, we should pass a budget before the nearing deadline and not shut down government.

I am so proud that this budget included a critical judgeship in Loudoun that was very important to me and to Senator Dick Black. It also included resources for the Innovation Center in Winchester, the Laurel Center, Great Meadow, money for agriculture and conservation in our district, money for Sheriffs, ID/DD waivers, money for autism services, the Inland Port, and the list of matters important to constituencies in the 27th district is very long. Moreover, the larger budget has a lot that I am proud to support. It has significant reform measures as well as key funding for transportation, veterans, public safety, education, technology, broadband, agriculture and forestry, commerce and trade, the Courts, higher ed and funding for localities who depend on our budget decisions to make their own budgets.

With a few exceptions, the feedback on my work in this process has been overwhelmingly positive–more than at any time in my ten years in the Senate and most especially from those who have taken the time to actually track the votes and follow the amendments and for that I am very grateful.

At the end of this Senate session we had heard thousands of bills and resolutions. The budget bill was merely one of roughly 3,700 bills and resolutions. So we had our work cut out for us and I am pleased to be nearly finished. We still have judges to vote on and await the Governor’s action on a few remaining bills.

I extend my deepest gratitude to everyone who helped us this session, especially to my staff and to the hundreds of activists and friends who came to visit and who generously contributed to our work on bills and on the budget.

I take your comments and feedback seriously and am always grateful to hear from you. Please feel free to email any time that you have questions or comments at district27@senate.virginia.gov. I appreciate the opportunity to serve you and I am grateful for your continued support.