Governors Meet in Washington This Week Calling on Congress to Restore Funding for an FMAP Extension and Warn of “Double-Dip” Recession

Worried that additional federal Medicaid fund may never come, or come too late to be much help in fiscal 2011, a group of bipartisan governors from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Maryland, New York, Washington, Kansas, Illinois, California, Colorado and Connecticut, held a press conference Wednesday urging Congress to extend the additional federal Medicaid funding contained in the ARRA stimulus package. Thirty states already assumed that the additional federal money would be extended when planning their budgets for 2011, which begins July 1st in most states.  However, the measure has been repeatedly blocked in the Senate although the House has passed it twice and the Senate passed it in March.  Last Thursday, Senate Democratic leaders again failed to gain the necessary 60 votes to override a Republic filibuster on a third compromised and pared down bill. The governors did not endorse a specific bill or offsets this week.  Forty-seven governors signed a letter in February agreeing on the need for the additional Medicaid funds.