With the House and Senate in a seemingly unbreakable deadlockover the issue of funding Medicaid, the decision was made Wednesdayfor the Legislature to adjourn for three weeks.

Lawmakers plan to reconvene on June 26 – less than one week fromthe start of the fiscal year on July 1, when Gov. Haley Barbour hassaid he will begin cutting programs from an unfunded Medicaid.

While most of the other issues on the special session’s callhave been dealt with – like providing two years of funding for theMississippi Department of Environmental Security – Medicaid hasgone through three weeks of debate and at least three differentfunding bills in the House, all of which were defeated. Barbour,Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant and Speaker of the House Billy McCoy gatheredfor a noon meeting Wednesday and agreed to send the two chambershome for three weeks of what local legislators are calling time “toclear the air.”

“I think it was a strategic move by the governor – no one wasgoing to blink, and someone is going to have to,” said District 92Rep. Becky Currie, R-Brookhaven. “This will give all sides anopportunity to go home, clear their heads and come back and make adecision without losing face.”

Currie said she hopes the leaders of each chamber would iron outa solution that would satisfy the Legislature when it reconvenes,but her support stills lies with the proposed bed assessmentbill.

“Now that we have a good bill, I can live with this – we can getMedicaid funded for a minimum of five years,” she said. “It’s agood deal, because there’s never been a year I can remember when wedidn’t have some kind of Medicaid issue except the two years wepaid for it with Katrina money.”

District 53 Rep. Bobby Moak, D-Bogue Chitto, agreed with Curriethat sending the Legislature home for three weeks was a goodstrategic move, but his definition of strategy was fardifferent.

“Now the governor has an opportunity to gather momentum to passhis legislation, which only garnered 45 votes in the House,” Moaksaid. “He’ll get the hospitals to immediately begin contactingtheir representatives and asking them to vote for this bill. Thereason why they will vote for it is because he is threatening tocut Medicaid funds from hospitals.”

Moak said he believes Barbour’s threat to slash the program is ahollow one, however, as doing so would have such a crippling effecton Mississippi’s health care systems that the governor would beunable to carry out the cuts.

But, Moak said he anticipates the hospital assessment to finallypass when the Legislature comes back on June 26. He said thetobacco tax bill does not have the support to pass the House, nordoes his own preferred method of funding Medicaid – tapping themore than $300 million Rainy Day Fund.

“It probably won’t happen, because the lieutenant governor andthe Senate will bow to the wishes of the governor – they won’tconsider a tobacco tax or using the Rainy Day Fund,” Moak said. “Atthe end of the day, the hospitals will have to do the bidding ofthe governor and he will get his bill passed.”

District 91 Rep. Bob Evans, D-Monticello, is undeterred. He saidhe would be prepared to vote against a hospital assessment onceagain if that was the solution awaiting him in three weeks.

Unlike Moak, Evans is still holding out hope that the three-weekbreak could be used to draw up an acceptable tobacco tax.

“It’s certainly wishful thinking on my part, but that’s the onlyway they’re going to get a vote out of me,” Evans said. “It doesn’tmake sense to me – since Medicaid is the only real issue we haveleft – to take this break unless there’s going to be some kind ofheadway made on a tobacco tax.”

Evans said if there was no tobacco tax ironed out for a Medicaidfunding solution, there was no need to go back “tomorrow, June orNovember or any time.” He said the Democratic House membership willcontinue to vote against the governor’s hospital assessmentproposal.

“I think it would be an exercise in futility if they’re doinganything else (during the three-week break),” Evans said.

District 39 Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, D-Brookhaven, has littleconfidence in any air-clearing that may come to pass in the comingthree weeks.

“Hopefully we can get something done when we go back in threeweeks, but I’m not that optimistic about it,” she said. “I hope I’mwrong, but I think the deadlock will remain.”

Hyde-Smith said the best solution for breaking the bicamerallockdown would be to wait until the 2009 regular session inJanuary, when the legislative agenda would not be restricted as itis in the special session.

“Short of a miracle, I think we’ll be dealing with Medicaid inJanuary,” she said. “There comes a point where there’s just animpasse.”