State House and Senate leaders say this week's legislative session on redistricting likely marks their final votes of 2025 — which would end the year with no action on Medicaid funding or a full state budget.
The House passed several bills Wednesday dealing with the Medicaid funding shortfall and raises for teachers and law enforcement officers, but the Senate had already left town. The Medicaid shortfall has prompted the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services to cut provider reimbursement rates and coverage for weight-loss drugs, but Republicans argue those cuts are premature given the funding already allocated to the program.
"All I can say is, on our end of the chamber, we are willing to negotiate on all of the key points, and that's not reciprocated on the other side," House Speaker Destin Hall told reporters after the session.
But Senate leaders had proposed a compromise on Medicaid earlier in the week. Documents show they were willing to pair the Medicaid money with a smaller allocation for rural healthcare and the new N.C. Children's Hospital. The proposed compromise would have also included raises for law enforcement.
But Hall said Wednesday he's unwilling to approve any funding for the Children's Hospital, a partnership between Duke and UNC planned for a site in Apex, unless it's part of a full budget agreement. And the House and Senate haven't made any progress on that front, because Republicans from the two chambers strongly disagree on whether to delay scheduled income tax cuts.
“It’s time to stop playing politics and come to the negotiating table," Senate budget chairmen said in a news release Wednesday.
Legislators have been late in passing a budget in past years, but each time House and Senate Republicans ultimately did reach an agreement by fall. The last time the state went without a new two-year budget bill was 2019, when Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the legislature's spending plan and lawmakers failed to override his veto.
With the Senate gone on Wednesday, the House had the option to pass Senate bills on Medicaid funding, law enforcement raises and a separate measure aimed at banning Medicaid funding from supporting non-abortion healthcare services offered by Planned Parenthood.
Instead, the House introduced and passed three new bills on those topics Wednesday afternoon before adjourning. One bill is similar to a Planned Parenthood funding ban that passed the Senate last month, but because it's a different bill, it won't go to the governor anytime soon.
Another bill would provide raises for teachers and law enforcement officers that mirrored the original House budget bill. The Senate passed a bill last month with law-enforcement raises, but it didn't include teacher raises. Senate leader Phil Berger said earlier this week that state employee raises need to be part of a full budget agreement.
Hall compared the House bills to the Senate's versions.
"We took the good things in those bills and largely kept them the same, although we gave some greater raises to law enforcement," he told reporters. "Essentially it's trying to negotiate with the Senate that way. We'll try anything we possibly can to get a negotiation done."
The legislature has brief sessions scheduled for November and December, but Hall and Berger both indicated they don't expect to hold votes, barring an unexpected breakthrough in negotiations.
With the budget impasse, "if nothing on that front changes, then I don't anticipate there being anything to vote on for the remainder of the year," Hall said.
