AFP-VA Responds to Gov. Northam’s Potential Budget Reveal

Mar 21, 2018 by AFP

Grassroots group hopeful Gov. Northam offers a clean budget for swift passage in General Assembly

RICHMOND, Va. – Americans for Prosperity-Virginia (AFP-VA) on Wednesday issued the following statement in hopes that Governor Northam will offer a clean budget for immediate passage in the General Assembly. The legislature adjourned its regular session earlier this month without passing a budget after the two chambers reached an impasse over whether to include Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in the Commonwealth’s two-year budget bill.

“Governor Northam can end the threat of a shutdown today. The House of Delegates’ reckless insistence on forcing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, coupled with a tax on Virginia’s healthcare providers, into the state budget has resulted in Washington-style gridlock and failure in the General Assembly,” said AFP-VA State Director JC Hernandez. “We ask Governor Northam to follow the Senate’s lead and propose a clean budget. Our families, teachers, firefighters, policemen, and counties deserve it, and so we must fight for it. Let’s not revisit what happened four years ago by shutting down the government again. Governor Northam needs to understand it didn’t work then and it will not work now.”

Background:

AFP-VA and its base of more than 100,000 grassroots activists has been at the forefront of the fight against Medicaid expansion.

Since before the start of the 2018 session, the group has orchestrated a sweeping, multilayered effort to mobilize its activists to engage with lawmakers and coalition partners statewide to urge the General Assembly to reject the Obamacare Medicaid expansion.

AFP-VA has hosted, and plans to host in the coming weeks town halls and tele-town halls with state lawmakers and other conservative thought leaders to drive the message that Medicaid expansion, including the version the state House lawmakers currently support as part of the state budget, is not conservative.

The effort has also included a robust phone banking and radio and digital advertisement campaign that has enabled activists to make thousands of phone calls and send more than 10,000 letters to urge lawmakers to oppose Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

The group has already scheduled multiple phone banks and rallies throughout the state in the coming weeks and will continue to plan more until Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion is pulled from the budget.

For further information or an interview, reach Lorenz Isidro at LIsidro@afphq.org or (703) 887-7724.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) exists to recruit, educate, and mobilize citizens in support of the policies and goals of a free society at the local, state, and federal level, helping every American live their dream – especially the least fortunate. AFP has more than 3.2 million activists across the nation, a local infrastructure that includes 36 state chapters, and has received financial support from more than 100,000 Americans in all 50 states. For more information, visit www.americansforprosperity.org

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