It’s sad to see Maine’s legislative leaders imitating our dysfunctional Congress by pushing legislation that has no hope of passage just to bank talking points for the next election campaign.
We point to two bills that everyone in Augusta knows are dead as door nails yet partisans keep arguing about them as if they are actually important.
Both are ill-conceived and would set frightening precedents if they did pass into law.
The first is the loud effort by Democrats to kill a contract awarded to a Rhode Island consultant to study the state’s Medicaid system.
Gov. Paul LePage privately negotiated a contract with Gary Alexander, a fellow Republican whose only qualification for the work was his controversial exertions in two other states to knock people off Medicaid.
Such studies are usually done by big think tanks and accounting companies, like the Rand Corp. or Pricewaterhouse Cooper, which specialize in doing objective research.
Plus government agencies usually seek open bids on expensive projects like this.
So, Lepage’s hiring of a Republican operative without bidding was a mistake from the start.
How big of a mistake didn’t become fully apparent until Alexander issued the first of several reports. It contained a whopper of a math error that practically destroyed the credibility of his work, which was also laughably one-sided.
Alexander and his study are now rarely mentioned by LePage or Republican legislators, having become something of an embarrassment.
Still, a contract is a contract, and the administration clearly has the Constitutional power to enter into contracts. This is a separation of powers issue.
What’s more, Alexander has already done most of the work and, by the time the legislative dust settles, he will be even further along. Refusing to then pay him would take years to litigate and likely end in his favor.
But here’s the kicker: After Democrats pass this bill, the governor will veto it anyway. Then Republicans will vote against an override, and there it will end.
So, our advice to Democrats: Stop flogging this dead horse.
But the governor and at least some Republicans are backing an equally inane bill calling for the Maine Ethics Commission to act as a truth squad to check the veracity of political advertisements.
This bill is a real head-slapper.
Aren’t Republicans the party of small government? The party of tight budgets? The party with little faith in government bureaucrats? The party that holds the U.S. Constitution sacred and immutable?
And yet, here’s the state’s top Republican promoting a bill that would enlarge government, cost money, put power in the hands of bureaucrats and violate the free-speech provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
What’s more, LePage himself has been a walking font of misinformation and incivility for the past three years.
Last week he predicted that the upcoming campaign for governor would be the “hate campaign of all campaigns,” which seems to be a prospect he relishes.
We won’t bore you again with the catalog of his verbal miscues, exaggerations and intemperate remarks. The national media has done that again and again.
Republicans know this idea was dead on arrival — that it wasn’t going to move an inch in the Legislature.
This bill was submitted just so LePage can say during the campaign that he tried to bring honesty to campaigns but Democrats rejected it.
Never mind that it was bad legislation and likely illegal.
This is the sort of grandstanding that leaders of the U.S. Congress do full time just to fire up their followers and compile file footage for the next campaign.
That’s why the U.S. House voted 54 times in the past four years to repeal Obamacare. Life in the House is just one long campaign.
And it helps explain why Congress has failed for the past four years to address serious concerns like immigration, unemployment, student loan debt and the decline of the middle class.
At some point, the Maine Legislature will have to do what it always does — produce a budget.
In the meantime, let’s dispense with the posturing and concentrate on sensible ideas to make Maine a better place.
rrhoades@sunjournal.com
The opinions expressed in this column reflect the views of the ownership and the editorial board.
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