Governors' laundry list

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The governors met in the nation's capital this week to talk about rising Medicaid costs and modernizing school curriculums for the 21st century, issues far from the top of Congress' agenda.

As often happens at governors' meetings, there was a deep disconnect between the parochial issues they wanted to talk about and Topic A in Washington, D.C.

The capital is almost exclusively focused on Social Security reform, a subject many governors said was of little interest back home where health care, education and jobs were the front-burner issues they wrestled with each day.

"Today we're talking about what might happen to Social Security in 15 to 20 years while they're cutting Medicaid that will affect people now," said Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana. Of course, if we don't fix Social Security's coming insolvency now, it will be too late to solve it 20 years without Draconian tax increases and benefit cuts.

Still, Medicaid, the national medical care program for the poor, is taking an ever-larger bite out of state and federal budgets and President Bush wants to block-grant the fed's share to the states, putting the governors in charge of finding more cost-effective ways to fund their programs.

But the governors fear they will eventually be stuck with a bigger share of the bill -- they call it "unfunded mandates" -- which Mr. Bush said he doesn't want to happen.

"We're worried about intergovernmental transfers, so we put that on the table for discussion," Mr. Bush told the governors at a White House meeting Monday.

Behind the scenes, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Levitt was offering the governors a menu of reforms to save money. But there were no takers.

The governors want more flexibility over the program than the White House is willing to give them. They also want more money, thus far not in the cards. So they left Tuesday without a deal and with looming Medicaid expenses ahead unless a compromise can be worked out.

But before they returned home, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the Democratic Governors Association chairman, had some blunt advice for his party's congressional leaders: Quit being so hostile to tax cuts.