You’ve heard of TACO – Trump Always Chickens Out – right? Here’s the Ken Paxton version of that.
Paxton also chickens out
As Texas hospitals learned this week that the Trump administration was currently holding up their $10 billion in Medicaid payments, the state’s attorney general and U.S. Senate hopeful Ken Paxton was noticeably silent.
Three years ago, Paxton’s office was quick to come to the state’s defense when the Biden administration threatened to withhold the same type of Medicaid funding to hospitals called the Comprehensive Hospital Increase Reimbursement Program, also known as CHIRP. If Texas’ payment that year had been disallowed, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could have withheld all the CHIRP funding that year, which is the same problem Texas is facing this year.
“This is not only a win for the integrity of Texas health care, but it’s also a defeat of Joe Biden’s unlawful overreach,” Paxton said almost a year ago in a news release declaring his “major nationwide legal victory.” “This rule is just one example of the Biden administration’s misuse of CMS, which was employed to target conservative states.”
But now confronted with facing off the Trump administration, Paxton has not used a tool — filing a lawsuit to retain the CHIRP funds — that has proved successful in the past even as Gov. Greg Abbott, another staunch Trump ally, has come out publicly that there’s nothing illegal about what Texas is doing to get those funds. Neither the attorney general’s office or Paxton’s political campaign have commented on the sudden halt of the money, which is costing Texas hospitals $27 million a day.
The silence is not surprising, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. Paxton is facing a tight race for incumbent Sen. John Cornyn’s seat against a moneyed Democratic challenger, state Rep. James Talarico, and defying Trump and his loyalists is a liability, Rottinghaus said.
Early voting starts Oct. 19 and the 2026 Republican Midterm Convention starts in Dallas next week.
“You know, he’s in a very politically delicate situation, and he doesn’t want the story to be, Trump versus Paxton,” Rottinghaus said. “He’s biding his time in a way that is useful as a delay tactic to not make this a story that could splash back up on him.”
Last month, Abbott quietly stepped in to throw his support behind the Texas Health and Human Services Commission which has news of the behind-the-curtain impasse between Texas and Washington. The Texas Tribune was the first to report on the letter and the cuts facing hospitals.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Abbott reiterated that Texas was not backing down, a rare public example of a Republican in Texas fighting for Medicaid, which covers 4 million people statewide, most of them low-income. About a third of all children in Texas and two-thirds of Texans in nursing homes receive Medicaid.
According to the Texas Hospital Association, if they do not receive this Medicaid funding stream, hospitals are at risk of closing down their NICUs and maternity wards, which are among the most expensive services to maintain.
There’s more, so read the rest, and also read the earlier story about the money the hospitals are losing, which absolutely threatens their continued existence. You never have to hand it to Greg Abbott, but he is at least doing that thing that once upon a time was considered the most basic thing for an elected official to do, which is to fight for all the resources that their constituents are due. Which Ken Paxton is manifestly not doing, and for the most shameless of partisan reasons. This is who he is. Well, this and all the lying and grift is who he is.