Just leap, don’t look

LITTLE ROCK — IT’S ALWAYS good to hear from Bob Johnson of Bigelow, former speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives, former president pro tem of the state Senate, and current Elder Statesman and Distinguished Kibitzer. Every time he speaks up, it reminds us of how far the Legislature has come since his time. Especially when former Rep./Sen. Johnson waxes nostalgic for the good old days before term limits, when legislators could serve approximately forever.

The other day the distinguished former was dismissing the current General Assembly as a bunch of “greenhorns” who would have a hard time handling complicated issues like whether to expand Medicaid by hundreds of thousands of enrollees, and who knows at what cost. Or maybe at a considerable savings. Estimates vary, and how. It’s all enough to make a CPA’s eyes cross. Studies show, as every dubious pitch seems to begin these days, whatever those financing the study want them to show.

Oh, for the good old bad old days when whatever bosses like Knox Nelson and Max Howell said went in the state Senate. And a whole string of governors had only to express a wish and it became state law, at least if they were Democrats and knew the well-oiled ropes. Things were so much simpler then without all these greenhorns in charge. (Sigh.)

Oh, for those golden years when legislative conundra could be left to someone like Nick Wilson, former boss of the state Senate, the go-to guy for any and all forms of patronage and pork. He consistently drew praise from those who loved The Process just as it impenetrably was. For the more complex the system, the more the expertise of the Nick Wilsons was needed to navigate it. And navigate it he did. Expertly. He drew rave reviews from the usual quarters for his experience and intelligence and general liberalism. “One of the brightest and most progressive members of the Legislature,” Bill Clinton called him.

Parliamentary procedure was Senator/Boss Wilson’s specialty, along with pelf and power. And, oh yes, defrauding a state program he had been instrumental in creating, one that was supposed to help kids who needed someone to look after their interests, not rob them. But this bright and progressive member of the Legislature saw to it that his program helped him most of all.

Yes, Nick Wilson was quite the power broker. At least before his convictions for tax evasion, conspiracy and racketeering. All of which tended to take the shine off his reputation as a master politician and knight in shining armor. After compiling a rap sheet like that, he retained only one distinction: poster boy for term limits.

NOW WE have Bob Johnson, that not-quite-gray eminence, sighing for those golden, preterm-limits years. They may not have quite the same appeal to those of us who remember Nick Wilson and some of the other colorful figures who once dominated the Ledge, not always for the better.

These days the big issue at the Capitol is whether Arkansas should expand its already $5-billion Medicaid program. How much things have changed at the Capitol is indicated by the cautious comment of the incoming president of the state Senate, a Republican from Russellville named Michael Lamoureux, who sounds as if he’d rather stop and wait, look and listen, before plunging the state ever deeper into another huge federal program.

Senator Lamoureux might even be willing to put off the decision on a bigger and better (or maybe worse) Medicaid program till a special session later in the year, just to give legislators time to consider all the pros and cons of a complicated issue. Because the facts and figures are far from clear at this point. Or as he put it, “You wouldn’t buy a house if you didn’t know what it costs.” Which is just the kind of prudence that so irritates all those super-salesmen eager to sell the state another federal program in a poke. (“You better grab this honey of a deal before you leave the lot, ’cause it may not be good tomorrow.”)

Senator Lamoureux sounds like a real Nervous Nellie compared to our current go-getter of a governor, The Hon. Mike Beebe, who doesn’t want to put off the decision on expanding Medicaid. He’d like it settled during this regular session of the Legislature. At least that’s the word from his official spokesperson.

Look before you leap? Far from advising so responsible a course, the usual gulls in the Legislature and out seem to have an entirely different order of priorities: Leap, don’t look. At least for longer than this regular session takes.

A COUPLE of the Beebe administration’s top guns-the directors of the state Medicaid program and its Department of Health and Human Services-have warned that, unless the Ledge finds the money to shore up Medicaid, maybe by grabbing the feds’ latest offer, terrible things will happen-like their having to throw 15,000 old folks out of their nursing homes. (“Quick, make up your mind or we’ll throw grandma over the cliff!”)

But some of the Republicans in the Legislature don’t scare easy. To quote Senator Lamoureux, those kinds of threatened cuts “aren’t going to happen.” Why? “We’ll find a solution,” he says, like using “one-time money or funds from other agencies.”

The senator from Russellville recommends solving one problem at a time, and tackling the current deficit in the state’s Medicaid program (latest estimate: $138 million) before considering its expansion. Which sounds unspeakably sensible-even old-fashioned in an era when the answer to every doubt about the ever-expanding cost of government, certainly in Washington, isSpend Now, Worry Later.

Senator Lamoureux sounds definitely out of step with that kind of rush to (mis)judgment. For which we are grateful. Since the unknowns in this equation outnumber the knowns, and even the knowns are subject to change without notice, or very little of it.

It was The Hon. Nancy Pelosi, minority leader of the U.S. House, and may her sort ever remain in the minority, who told us we’d have to pass Obamacare to find out what’s in it. And we’re still finding out-a 6-percent tax (always call it a Premium Fee) on state federal insurance exchanges here, a $63-a-head tax on company insurance plans there, and who knows how much more to surface later.

Obamacare is the gift that never stops taking. At this point, the process of trying to figure out its costs and benefits is less one of compiling facts and figures than guesses and estimates, usually of the ballpark variety. This is known as expertise. And it can be as precise as any other stab-in-the-dark.

What looks like a tempting offer today (“We’re from Washington and we’re here to help”) could turn out to be a trap tomorrow, like another UFM-unfunded federal mandate.

The surer the governor and his expert directors (Andy Allison, state Medicaid Director, and John Selig, state Health and Human Services Director) sound, the less sure some of the rest of us feel. The more convoluted the rules they’re explaining become, the more our bureaucrats, state and federal, seem to revel in them. And why not? The more complicated the ever-changing rules and-regs of federal-state programs, the more indispensable experts in them become. Like guides in a jungle.

José Ortega y Gasset, scholar and prophet, had a term for this kind of “planning” early in the last century, when he foresaw where it was headed. He called it the barbarism of specialization.