EdNC. Essential education news. Important stories. Your voice.

Search ednc.org

Berger to Cooper: Drop the Medicaid ultimatum, stop holding budget hostage

Share this story

Our republishing policy

EdNC is a nonprofit, online, daily, independent newspaper. All of EdNC’s content is open source and free to republish. Please use the following guidelines when republishing our content.
  • Our content must be republished in full. If your organization uses a paywall, the content must be provided in full for free.
  • Credit our team by including both the author name and EdNC.org in the byline. Example: Alex Granados, EdNC.org.
  • If republishing the story online, please provide a link to EdNC.org or a link to the original article in either the byline or credit line.
  • The original headline of the article must be used. Allowable edits to the content of the piece include changes to meet your publication’s style guide and references to dates (i.e. this week changed to last week). Other edits must be approved by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].
  • Photos and other multimedia elements (audio, video, etc.) may not be republished without prior permission. Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you are interested in sharing a multimedia element.
  • If you republish a story, please let us know by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].
Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you have any questions. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Canonical tag

Please include the following canonical tag in the <head> of the republished story.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.ednc.org/berger-to-cooper-drop-the-medicaid-ultimatum-stop-holding-budget-hostage/">

HTML content

This includes the title, byline, content, and tracking pixel required for republishing this story.

Copy & paste HTML
This story is tagged:

The following is a press release from Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, R-Rockingham

Governor Roy Cooper finally made his Medicaid ultimatum explicit in a public setting today. During his press conference, Cooper said, “I don’t want us to be passing the budget and just having the House pass Medicaid expansion because then you’re not going to get Medicaid expansion.” Cooper also said, “I hope they will sustain the veto because just because Medicaid expansion passes the House, doesn’t mean we have Medicaid expansion.”
 
Senator Berger issued the following statement:
 
“The time for Governor Cooper to talk about the budget was last month, when I personally handed him my opening offers on nearly all of the priorities he discussed today and asked for a counter offer. He refused to give one and instead blocked teacher and state employee raises, rape kit testing, and school construction funding over his Medicaid ultimatum. 
 
“Governor Cooper has held the entire budget hostage over Medicaid expansion. If a veto override fails, we have a spending plan based on last year’s appropriations. At that point, the Governor can explain to voters why he blocked $24 billion over one policy disagreement. We can discuss a budget once he’s dropped his ultimatum.”