WHY???!!!
Because it is BAIT!
These politicians know going in to this that it a time limited offer. It is like an free trial offer from a magazine or premium TV channel on your cable. You get it free for 6 months and then you have to pay for it.
This money from the government will run out and then the state has to pick up the difference out of their general fund.
Medicare and Medicaid are already eating up huge portion of state budgets and with the baby boomers starting to flood the Medicare/Medicaid rolls this portion of the states budgets is growing every year without the expansion.
Entitlements will have to be dealt with eventually and this expansion of Medicaid will simply shorten the time available to deal with the tsunami of expenditures that are just on the horizon.
Underfunded retirement funds and Medicare/Medicaid will soon be a cataclysm that will bankrupt state, cities and the nation.
And add to those problems and onslaught of low skilled illegal aliens flooding the welfare rolls and we have an insurmountable tidal wave of people entitled to our money.
If we dont deal with these unfunded mandates they will destroy the nation.
What does Medicare have to do with state budgets?