After a long and contentious debate, the Kansas House of Representatives on Friday, Feb. 7, rejected a measure to place what amounted to a constitutional abortion ban on the August primary ballot.
The following Monday, Susan Wagle, president of the Kansas Senate, took hostage a long-worked bipartisan plan to expand the state’s Medicaid health insurance for the poor and disabled. Still seething over the House action, she pulled from the Senate debate calendar all bills that she believed might be a vehicle for expansion. Bills with even the slightest relation to health care, social services or taxation went into that weightless limbo between committee approval and Senate debate. In effect, the legislative machinery ground to a halt.
Wagle is an iron-fisted anti-abortion Republican from Wichita. She had long opposed expanded Medicaid in Kansas with claims it would lead to the public financing of abortions. (The use of federal funds for abortion is already prohibited.)
Expansion is estimated to provide coverage for an additional 150,000 people under the Affordable Care Act at a cost exceeding $300 million; the Kansas share, at ten percent, is estimated at $35 million.
The House has long favored Medicaid expansion and passed a bill last year. Wagle ordered it buried in a Senate committee. Wagle’s plan then, as now, was to weave the abortion debate into Medicaid. After months of summer study and hearings, a bipartisan plan was crafted for Senate hearings this year. It has the blessing of Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, and Senate majority leader Jim Denning, even with his history of loyal service to Wagle. The bill is now dying in the Senate Health and Welfare Committee.
Wagle remains fast against it. She is a candidate for the party’s nomination to the U.S. Senate to replace Pat Roberts, who is retiring, and her political anchor is the right-to-life movement. She needs their support in a primary contest against other hard line, fringe-right Republicans, each with a base, including former Secretary of State Kris Kobach (voter suppression, anti-immigration) and Rep. Roger Marshall (anti-Affordable Care Act, pro-Trump nationalism).
Wagle, 66, was not always so determined to seize and hold power. She entered politics in 1990 and won a seat in the Kansas House from a district in east Wichita. She quickly aligned herself with maverick conservatives who wanted a more open party caucus, leadership by merit rather than seniority, open records, ethics reform, a dismantling of the party power base, its campaign slush funds anchored firmly in Johnson County.
By 1995, Wagle had become the House Speaker pro tem and five years later was elected to the Senate. Determined to move up, she became president with ruthless cunning, helping Gov. Sam Brownback in 2012 purge the chamber of Republicans who were deemed “disloyal”. Among them was Senate President Steve Morris. Wagle seized the office and has since ruled with a quick temper and sharp tongue.
From the moment Kelly was elected governor, Wagle avowed that her proposals would see little if any light in the Senate – or its committees. Committee chairs who defied Wagle even slightly have been quickly removed. State Sen. John Doll of Dodge City left the Republican party in 2018 to join Independent Greg Orman in his campaign for governor. Wagle removed Doll from all committees. (Doll has since rejoined the GOP.)
A year ago, in January, Wagle named herself to replace Sen. Caryn Tyson as chairman of a new tax committee that Wagle created to deal with the effects of Trump tax cuts. The standing committee had begun to veer slightly from Wagle’s orders, so Wagle had created a new board and ran it herself.
Wagle last year persuaded Speaker Ron Ryckman to revive House strictures she had once fought to dismantle. At the beginning of the 2019 session, the 125-member House (84 Republicans, 41 Democrats) changed its rules to require 70 votes to bring a bill out of committee for a full debate the next day. For decades, a simple majority – 63 votes – was needed to bring a measure up for debate.
In the 40-member Senate (29 GOP, 11 Dem) the rules for now require 24 members to bring a bill – Medicaid expansion? – out of committee. The bill has 22 co-sponsors but only dreamers believe nearly half the Senate’s Republicans would defy Wagle and join Democrats to bring Medicaid expansion to the Senate floor for debate.
Republicans have veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate. The fate of legislation remains with Wagle because she prefers to reign, rather than lead. No matter any lofty speeches about the legislative process, or fair hearings, or the good of the state.
Kansans have elected 165 legislators, but for now only one matters. It’s her way or no way.
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