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State Sen.Larry Crowder on the first day of the Colorado state legislative session. Jan 11, 2016. (Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite)

By James Anderson, Associated Press

A Senate committee led by Republicans who oppose tampering with the Taxpayers Bill of Rights on Monday defeated a measure to ask Colorado voters if they want to keep more tax revenue for roads, education and health care.

GOP Rep. Dan Thurlow of Grand Junction and Sen. Larry Crowder of Alamosa wanted to ask voters to change the way limits on state revenue are calculated under TABOR, the constitutional amendment adopted in 1992.

But the Senate State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee voted 3-2 along party lines to reject the bill.

Thurlow says the states spending blueprint needs fixing because circumstances have changed substantially and everything from K-12 education to roads are chronically underfunded. Each year, lawmakers struggle to balance the budget and meet the needs of rapidly growing Colorado because of the revenue cap.

TABOR requires any revenue above the cap to be refunded to taxpayers, unless voters say otherwise. The cap is calculated using population growth and inflation, while thebillwould have used a higher rate of personal income growth instead.

Budget forecasts say refunds could total $158 million or upward for the fiscal year that starts July 1. Thurlow had testified that his bill would drastically cut anticipated refunds.

The two Republican sponsors said they were trying to untangle conflicting legal mandates that dictate what lawmakers can and cannot do. TABOR restricts spending; another mandate requires increased K-12 spending each year; and yet another will soon reduce property tax collections, which are tied to how much commercial property taxes are rising.

We have to fix the process in order to make logical decisions on the budget, Thurlow said recently. If they want us to prioritize, they have to take away the restrictions.

Crowders rural southern Colorado district has suffered because of budget-balancing tactics that include reducing fees paid by hospitals to secure matching federal funds. Those fees are counted as state revenue under TABOR, and when they are cut to balance the budget, rural hospitals get less.

If you look at it realistically, what are we doing here if we cant govern? Crowder said. There is no holy grail in government. Period. Including TABOR.

The sponsors argument ran counter to long-held orthodoxy among Colorado Republicans who insist that the state can make do with what it has.

Senate President Kevin Grantham triggered a near-rebellion this session among fellow Republicans when he and Democratic House Speaker Crisanta Duran unveiled a bill that would ask voters for a sales tax hike and a bond issue to fund billions of dollars in transportation needs.

Several Republicans, including Granthams No. 2, Sen. Chris Holbert, denounced any tax hike. Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, vice chairman of the State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, said he would introduce a transportation bill with no tax hike.

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Senate Republicans killed a Republican-sponsored bill to let Colorado keep more tax revenue - Denverite (blog)

Republicans lead fight to ban fracking in Florida Miami Herald Citing unresolved health concerns, Florida lawmakers are weighing the fate of a measure that would ban fracking across the state. Legislators are pushing the bill to safeguard Florida's clean water supply, which is the drinking water source for 90 ... and more »

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Republicans lead fight to ban fracking in Florida - Miami Herald

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence

Vice President Mike Pence called on Congress to keep the presidents promise during an event in Florida to shore up support for a contentious health-care bill, but didnt address the finding that has moderate Republicans most worried: that 14 million Americans may lose health coverage in a year.

Were going to continue to work with members of Congress to improve this bill, Pence said in Jacksonville after meeting with small business owners. He noted a plan that would allow states to include a work requirement for able-bodied adults to receive Medicaid.

The visit to the Mac Papers Envelope Converters facility comes as President Donald Trump and his team try to repel opposition from both sides of the Republican Party to the measure to end Obamacare, which could come to the House floor for a vote as soon as March 23. Pence heard complaints from some business owners about the cost of complying with Obamacare, and promised their nightmare would end.

Trump met Friday with leaders of the Republican Study Committee, and committed to tweaking the American Health Care Act to appeal tounhappy conservatives. The president said the changes -- including an amendment that would give states options to further limit enrollment in Medicaid -- had brought several opponents on board. I want everyone to know that Im 100 percent behind this, Trump after the meeting. Obamacare is dead.

Pence held a similar event in Kentucky a week ago. Concerns about the House bill have only risen since then; Trump and Pence face a growing number of moderate Republicans, particularly in the Senate, who say that the bill would force millions to lose insurance coverage. Four Republican governors came out against the plan on Friday.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a March 13 report that the AHCA would increase the number of Americans without insurance by 14 million in 2018 and 24 million in 2026. That assessment, which found older Americans would face higher insurance costs to the point where some would forgo coverage, was cited by Florida lawmakers who represent a disproportionate number of elderly voters.

Pence didnt refer to the agencys report during his remarks, which were broadly unchanged from a week earlier.

For a QuickTake on repealing Obamacare, click here.

Florida has more than 1.5 million people enrolled in the federal insurance marketplace, more than any other state, according to federal data. Many of the Sunshine States retirees and other residents not old enough to qualify for Medicare rely on Obamacare.

Republican Governor Rick Scott chose not to expand the states Medicaid health insurance for the poor under Obamacare, and has called for federal money for the program to be given to the states in block grants. Pence on Saturday suggested the block-grant proposal may be adopted, as well as the potential for states to add a work requirement for recipients of Medicaid.

A number of moderate Republican lawmakers from Florida questioned support for the bill after the CBO analysis was published.

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, whose district includes much of Miami, said she couldnt support the bill because it would reduce coverage for the poor and the elderly.

I have decided to vote no on the bill as currently written, Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement on March 14. The bills consequences for South Florida are clear: too many of my constituents will lose insurance and there will be less funds to help the poor and elderly with their health care.

Representatives Carlos Curbelo and Mario Diaz-Balart, other South Florida Republicans, also said the CBO report raised serious concerns, according to the Miami Herald.

We need every Republican in Florida to support this plan, Pence said in Jacksonville.

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The bill would need 216 supporters to pass if all 430 currently sitting House members showed up for the vote. With the 193 Democrats expected to vote as a bloc against repealing Obamacare, Ryan can lose no more than 21 Republicans. Current vote-counting suggests more than 21 members from the right and left factions of the Republican majority have said theyll vote against the bill, or remain undecided.

And if the measure passes the House, it faces additional challenges in the Senate, where Republicans hold a slim 52-48 majority. At least eight Republican Senators have publicly opposed the bill. Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, said a vote for the bill by Republicans would risk losing the House majority in the 2018 midterm election.

The AHCA would end Obamacares requirement that individuals must have, and employers above a certain size must offer, health coverage. It would also eliminate several taxes on the wealthy, insurers and drugmakers used to fund Obamacare. The proposal includes a refundable, age-based tax credit to help people buy insurance and a rollback of an expansion of Medicaid over a period of years.

Pence and Trump have met in recent days with conservative groups, attempting to gin up support for the new administrations first major legislative effort.

Pence is expected to speak mainly about health care in an appearance later Saturday at the Club for Growths winter economic conference in Palm Beach. The conservative group, which advocates cutting taxes and reforming safety-net programs including Social Security, came out against the bill shortly after it was introduced.

Trump is also spending the weekend in Palm Beach, at his oceanside Mar-a-Lago resort. He will return to Washington on Sunday.

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Keep Trump's Promise, Pence Tells Republicans on Health Bill - Bloomberg

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but for governments its not that easy. Once something is given say, health insurance coverage to 20 million Americans you take it away at your peril. This is true for any government benefit, but especially for health care. Theres a reason not one Western democracy with some system of national health care has ever abolished it.

The genius of the left is to keep enlarging the entitlement state by creating new giveaways that are politically impossible to repeal. For 20 years, Republicans railed against the New Deal. Yet, when they came back into office in 1953, Eisenhower didnt just keep Social Security, he expanded it.

People hated Obamacare for its highhandedness, incompetence and cost. At the same time, its crafters took great care to create new beneficiaries and new expectations. Which makes repeal very complicated.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that, under Paul Ryans Obamacare replacement bill, 24 million will lose insurance within 10 years, 14 million after the first year.

Granted, the number is highly suspect. CBO projects 18 million covered by the Obamacare exchanges in 2018. But the number today is about 10 million. That means the CBO estimate of those losing coverage is already about 8 million too high.

Nonetheless, there will be losers. And their stories will be plastered wall to wall across the media as sure as night follows day.

That scares GOP moderates. And yet the main resistance to Ryan comes from conservative members complaining that the bill is not ideologically pure enough. They mock it as Obamacare Lite.

For example, Ryan wants to ease the pain by phasing out Medicaid expansion through 2020. The conservative Republican Study Committee wants it done next year. This is crazy. For the sake of two years savings, why would you risk a political crash landing?

Moreover, the idea that you can eradicate Obamacare root and branch is fanciful. For all its catastrophic flaws, Obamacare changed expectations. Does any Republican propose returning to a time when you can be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition?

Its not just Donald Trump who ran on retaining this new, yes, entitlement. Everyone did. But its very problematic. If people know that they can sign up for insurance after they get sick, the very idea of insurance is undermined. People wont sign up when healthy and the insurance companies will go broke.

So what do you do? Obamacare imposed a monetary fine if you didnt sign up, for which the Ryan bill substitutes another mechanism, less heavy-handed but still government-mandated.

The purists who insist upon entirely escaping the heavy hand of government are dreaming. The best you can hope for is to make it less intrusive and more rational, as in the Ryan plans block-granting Medicaid.

Or instituting a more realistic age-rating system. Sixty-year-olds use six times as much health care as 20-year-olds, yet Obamacare decreed, entirely arbitrarily, that the former could be charged insurance premiums no more than three times that of the latter. The GOP bill changes the ratio from 3-to-1 to 5-to-1.

Premiums better reflecting risk constitute a major restoration of rationality. (Its how life insurance works.) Under Obamacare, the young were unwilling to be swindled and refused to sign up. Without their support, the whole system is thus headed into a death spiral of looming insolvency.

Rationality, however, has a price. The CBO has already predicted a massive increase in premiums for 60-year-olds. Thats the headline.

There is no free lunch. GOP hard-liners must accept that Americans have become accustomed to some new health care benefits, just as moderates have to brace themselves for stories about the inevitable losers in any reform. Thats the political price for fulfilling the seven-year promise of repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Unless, of course, you go the full Machiavelli and throw it all back on the Democrats. How? Republicans could forget about meeting the arcane requirements of reconciliation legislation (which requires only 51 votes in the Senate) and send the Senate a replacement bill loaded up with everything conservative including, tort reform and insurance competition across state lines. That would require 60 Senate votes. Let the Democrats filibuster it to death and take the blame when repeal-and-replace fails, Obamacare carries on and then collapses.

Upside: You reap the backlash. Downside: You have to live with your conscience.

Charles Krauthammers email address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com.

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COMMENTARY: Republicans, the real world and repealing Obamacare - Las Vegas Review-Journal

WASHINGTON Republicans moved to require able-bodied, poor Americans to work to receive publicly funded health insurance through Medicaid on Thursday, advancing a long-held goal of conservative reformers.

These work requirements address a common concern of policymakers around public-assistance programs: that the poor will not look for work, because if they earned more, they might no longer be poor enough to qualify for help. Additionally, for Republicans and many Democrats, work requirements are a matter of fairness.

When Medicaid was created, it wasnt intended to become an entitlement for able-bodied adults, said Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., introducing the proposal to include Medicaid work requirements in the Republicans health care bill.

Republicans on the House budget committee voted to include the proposal, a one-sentence motion that leaves the details of the plan for later in the legislative process. But like the Republicans health care bill itself, it has many hurdles left to clear to become law.

Many forms of public assistance, including food stamps, require recipients to work, look for work, volunteer or participate in vocational training. The work requirements vary by the program and traits of the recipients, such as their ages and whether they have children.

Yet when it comes to health insurance, such requirements would be nearly impossible to enforce, conservative and independent experts on the Medicaid program said Friday.

Its not entirely clear that this requirement makes a lot of sense, said Benjamin Sommers, a public-health expert at Harvard University.

The majority of adults receiving Medicaid already are working. Currently, about 78 percent of adults enrolled in Medicaid who are not elderly live in households with at least one person working, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Those who are not working might have good reasons for doing so, said Diane Rowland, an executive vice president at the foundation.

Experts also questioned whether officials were really prepared to deny medical care to people who were seriously ill because they had not been working.

The proposal misses the point, said Robert Rector, an expert on welfare at the conservative Heritage Foundation, who dismissed the plan as largely a matter of press release, not policy substance.

Mr. Rector was skeptical that governors and other state officials would enforce the requirements strictly, if at all.

He pointed out that if a person wanted to avoid the requirement, she could simply not enroll in Medicaid unless she became ill, at which point she could go to a hospital or a clinic and enroll then.

Its very difficult to deny an individual medical services when theyre sick, he said. It seems reasonable to say, Well, if society is going to care for you, or assist you, you should do something back in return. The problem is its very difficult to do that with regard to medical care.

The analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, based on federal surveys, suggests that about 18 percent of adult Medicaid beneficiaries who are not working are in school. Another 28 percent report that they are taking care of members of their family, and 35 percent say that they are sick or disabled.

People who can work, try to work, the foundations Ms. Rowland said. Theyre working in gas stations and restaurants in places unless they live in San Francisco where they dont get health benefits.

The Republican recommendation is limited to able-bodied adults without children or other dependents.

Ms. Rowland pointed out, though, that states would presumably have the difficult task of determining who would be considered able-bodied and subject to the requirements, and who is too sick to work.

Nor is there evidence that Medicaid discourages beneficiaries from getting jobs.

Researchers had an opportunity to test this theory in Oregon, when the state expanded Medicaid to a larger group of residents using a lottery. The group that lost out in the lottery neither worked more nor earned more, the economists who studied the program found.

Other research has come to similar conclusions. A review published in 2012 concluded that Medicaid had essentially a zero effect on beneficiaries decisions about work. That could be because people who qualify for the program are poor enough that they need to work if they can, whether or not they have health insurance.

It is certainly possible that some recipients could be pushed to work, and that they might find private health insurance through their employer as a result.

Even so, Ms. Rowland argued that the program was unlikely to save much money from shifting those beneficiaries off the rolls. Those who are healthy enough to work likely cost Medicaid little, she said, while the program spends the bulk of its resources caring for people who will not be able to enter the labor force.

You probably are not going to do very much to change the cost of the program, Ms. Rowland said. Its not healthy people who are on Medicaid who cost money.

Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, agreed that the rule would be largely symbolic.

He called the idea of requiring work in general reasonable and sound, but added: If it were a firm requirement, and that meant that somebody who got hit by a bus showed up at a hospital and they werent treated, that seems like bad policy to me.

President Donald Trumps views on the question are unknown, but in the past, he has made expansive and inclusive promises about coverage for the poor.

Were going to have insurance for everybody, Mr. Trump told The Washington Post in January. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you cant pay for it, you dont get it. Thats not going to happen with us.

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Republicans threaten to deny poor people medical care if they aren't ... - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette