Gov. Phil Bryant will not call a special legislative session regarding Medicaid unless Democrats agree beforehand to renew the program as is without expansion, the Mississippi governor said last week in an interview with The Daily Leader editorial board.

“The moment that the Democrats will call me and say we will renew the existing Medicaid plan … then we’ll call a special session on Medicaid,” Bryant said.

Without these assurances from Democrats, including House Minority Leader Bobby Moak, D-Bogue Chitto, the GOP governor said a special session would not accomplish anything

“If we call them back tomorrow, they’d kill it again,” Bryant said of Democrats.

The Affordable Care Act (commonly referred to as “Obamacare”) called for states to expand the eligibility of the Medicaid program and allow people with an income up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level to enroll in Medicaid.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, however, that the federal government can’t compel states to expand the Medicaid rolls.

Bryant and legislative GOP leaders in Mississippi have remained opposed to expanding the program.

However, the legislative Democratic minority has been able to prevent the renewal of the program in an attempt to leverage a vote on the program’s expansion.

Bryant, described Democrats as holding the state’s current Medicaid population hostage.

“This is all just to me a very disappointing political posture,” he said.

“It is not a way to manage a program as important as Medicaid.”

This year’s legislative session ended without authorization of the state’s Medicaid program past June 30.

If the program isn’t renewed in a special session, however, Bryant pledged to take action to keep the program in operation

“I’m going to do all I can not to that let happen,” he said, explaining that he believes he could use executive action to keep the program running.

The governor summarized his opposition to expansion: “I have openly said all along I am against the expansion of Medicaid because I do not believe the state can fund it and I do not believe the federal government will.”

The Affordable Care Act calls for the federal government to shoulder a significant share of the cost of an expanded Medicaid program.

Federal money would cover 100 percent of Medicaid costs during the first three years of the expansion. After that, federal funds would gradually scale back until they hit 90 percent of Medicaid costs, with states providing 10 percent of the remaining costs.

Bryant doesn’t believe that will pan out.

“They’re going to say, as they always do, we just don’t have the money,” the first-term governor said of the federal government.

Bryant pointed to the federal debt and scoffed at the idea of the federal government paying for Medicaid expansion while budget sequestration is requiring cuts to military bases and the loss of control towers at airports.

“This math does not work,” the governor said.

Looking closer to Brookhaven, Bryant praised the Linbrook Industrial Park.

“That’s a remarkable site,” he said. “We’ve worked hard to try to market that because we think Brookhaven is a great location.”

Asked to speak about potential economic development projects in Southwest Mississippi on the scale of what sites in North Mississippi have seen, Bryant pointed to anticipated development of the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale oil reserves.

“[That] has the potential to be the biggest economic development project the state has ever seen,” he said.