After eating up the first four hours of a day-long special legislative session, the tied Minnesota House of Representatives passed a contentious bill Monday that will take away access to MinnesotaCare for undocumented adults, marking a 68-65 victory for Republicans.
The measure on eligibility for the state-subsidized health care program was a key part of the budget compromise reached between DFL Gov. Tim Walz, the GOP and DFL leaders of the tied House, and the majority leader of the state Senate, where the DFL has a one-seat majority. With these razor-thin margins in the Legislature, DFL leadership needed to give Republicans something to secure their support in finishing the state’s biennial budget.
When rank-and-file DFL lawmakers learned of the concession, they balked, loudly. But Republicans insisted that this was the price of their cooperation in completing a two-year budget and avoiding a partial state government shutdown come July 1. In closed-door negotiations last week outlining the contours of the special session, Republicans explicitly tied the measure to funding for the state Department of Health, taking away just about all viable alternatives available to DFL lawmakers.
Related: MinnesotaCare for undocumented immigrants is tiny part of budget, huge talking point
“This is not a fiscally conservative idea,” a visibly frustrated Rep. Cedric Frazier, DFL-New Hope, said at a press conference held by the People of Color and Indigenous (POCI) caucus before the special session began. “We’re going to pay more. We know that. But there’s a poison pill in our health bill that says if the governor doesn’t sign this repeal, it kills the entire health bill.”
In the end, all House Republicans voted for the bill, with Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, casting the 68th vote. Although she said as recently as last Friday that she did not agree with the measure, she can say she was true to her word and stuck to the deal made with Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring. Her vote also gave all present DFL House members cover to vote against a bill that was anathema to the party’s base but ultimately necessary to secure movement in other budget areas.
Attempts to significantly change the bill were also quashed. For example, when Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura, DFL-Minneapolis, a member of the POCI caucus, introduced an amendment that would have prevented children currently on MinnesotaCare from being kicked off once they turned 18, allowed adults over 59 to access the subsidized insurance program, and kept adults of any age with a critical health condition on MinnesotaCare. The amendment garnered near-unanimous DFL support – 64 votes – but ultimately failed to breach the wall of unified Republican opposition.
At the POCI press conference, DFL lawmakers said that they had tried to cede ground to Republicans in other areas, but that the opposing caucus was committed to this specific issue above any others.
“We offered them changes to earned sick and safe time. We offered them changes to the non-compete bans,” said Sen. Alice Mann, DFL-Edina. “And they turned all of those things down because all they wanted was to make sure that 17,000 people were left out to die, that we worsened our health care system, and that we decreased our tax revenue.”
During his own press conference during a Senate recess, at which point that chamber had finished five bills while the House continued to debate MinnesotaCare, Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, did not dispute this characterization. Instead, he turned the same argument against the DFL.
“I think it’s a great framing of it,” Johnson said. “Here we have Democrats that are willing to cut the benefits to Minnesotans” in exchange for “benefits for illegal aliens.”
“This shows you how mixed up their priorities are,” he said.
With the bill’s passage all but assured since it was directly attached to other budget bills, DFL lawmakers instead focused on registering their dissatisfaction with the compromise into the public record. Most of the the four hours spent on the bill went to DFL members who shared stories from constituents, gave accounts of their own experiences as immigrants, questioned the fiscal necessity of the bill, argued it would push people into emergency rooms where they would become greater financial burdens to the public, noted that undocumented immigrants contribute hundreds of millions of dollars annually in state taxes, and, perhaps most frequently, lamented what they said was the immorality and cruelty of choosing to take health care access away from a vulnerable population that already faces too many headwinds.
Eventually, Rep. María Isa Pérez-Vega, DFL-St. Paul, began chanting “This ain’t ‘One Minnesota,’” referencing Walz’s gubernatorial campaign slogan, until her microphone was cut off.
“Representative Perez-Vega, you are out of order. Order in the chamber! Order in the chamber!” Demuth said, punctuated by a pounding gavel.
The many DFL floor speeches were in contrast to only a relative handful of Republican rebuttals, which focused on the fact that states such as Illinois and California had made similar decisions based on similar budget concerns. The Republican caucus, having effectively locked in their major policy victory of the session, seemed far more eager to get on with the vote than their colleagues across the aisle.
“I must say as we enter the fourth hour of the special session: I am gravely concerned about whether the other caucus in this chamber intends to, and is capable of, carrying out its commitment to finish the work that we have to finish today,” said Rep. Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, the caucus’ floor leader.
Less than 10 minutes later, Demuth called for the vote: “The clerk will take the roll now.”
And, shortly thereafter: “The bill is passed and its title is agreed to,” followed by a single gavel.
The measure then went to the Senate, where it saw a similarly tense, if truncated, debate. There, it passed after roughly an hour-and-a-half of discussion. Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope, and Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, voted with Republicans for a 37-30 final tally. As part of the larger budget compromise, the governor is expected to sign it in the coming days.
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