Rep. Jason Spencer on Monday called a decision by the Senate Rules Committee to table — and effectively kill — his anti-Obamacare legislation an “eleventh-hour betrayal.”
House Bill 707 would have barred any state or local government or agency from using its resources to advocate for Medicaid expansion, operate a health insurance exchange or operate a navigator program to help Georgians apply for health coverage on the federal Health Insurance Marketplace. Last week, the Senate Insurance and Labor Committee approved the bill in a five-minute meeting that included no public discussion of the legislation.
But the Rules Committee’s decision to table HB 707 means it won’t get a chance at passage. Monday was the last day of the 2014 legislative session to get on the Senate calendar so a bill could be voted on this year.
“I will identify the Republican Benedict Arnolds, the King George the Third and his myrmidons who shipwrecked this path breaking, patriotic bill to prevent the federal Leviathan from commandeering the machinery of state government or resources to enforce ill-conceived federal health insurance mandates,” Spencer, R-Woodbine, said in a press release Monday afternoon.
HB 707, however, isn’t necessarily dead. Its language is still alive in the form of an amended version of Senate Bill 292, which would establish a statewide Alzheimer’s Disease Registry. The House passed the amended SB 292 last week. If the Senate votes the new version through on Tuesday or Thursday, then SB 292 would head to the governor’s desk.
Spencer will hold a press conference Tuesday in the Capitol rotunda to discuss HB 707’s demise.
“A patriot saves his country from his government,” he said. “HB 707 would have been the first occasion in a century to draw a constitutional line against state complicity in endless federal encroachment.”
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