Governor should veto this deal

The Gazette Editorial Board

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We understand that having a Legislature controlled by both Republicans and Democrats means cutting deals. Some are good compromises forged in the interest of solving problems and governing Iowa. But then there are the misguided deals that make us wonder what lawmakers were thinking.

Under the latter category falls a deal that led to the passage of a massive health and human services budget bill.

The bill, which also contained hard-won bipartisan compromise on Medicaid expansion, got bogged down in a dispute over Medicaid-funded abortions. Each year, Medicaid pays for a small number of abortions in cases of fetal deformity, rape, incest, or to protect a mother's life. This fiscal year there have been nine such procedures, including eight fetal anomalies and one case where the life of the mother was at risk.

Some House Republicans want to end all funding for those procedures, even though such payments are mandated by the federal government. Cutting off that funding would jeopardize a huge portion of Iowa's Medicaid dollars. Democrats who run the Senate wouldn't do that.

To end the stalemate, lawmakers took the potentially unprecedented step of giving the governor the authority to decide which of these abortions get funded and which ones don't. So, basically, Gov. Terry Branstad will review each Medicaid abortion after the fact and decide whether to provide reimbursement.

We understand the passions surrounding this issue, and the desire to pass an important budget bill and end an overtime legislative session. But no governor should have this sort of authority. These decisions should be made based mostly on medicine, not politics. It seems like a remarkably bad idea to put a political leader, who may have no medical expertise, in the position of deciding which medical procedures are necessary and which ones are not.

It's been reported that no other state does this. That's not a surprise.

Branstad has said he expects to sign this provision into law. We think he should use his line-item veto power to strike it from the broader bill. Maybe lawmakers had to make a deal to end the session, but the governor doesn't have to make that misguided deal into a bad law.

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