Roberts predicts swift action on pent-up GOP agenda

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts with his wife, Franki, acknowledges the crowd after winning re-election over independent candidate Greg Orman, Tuesday night, Nov. 4, 2014, at a Kansas Republican gathering at the Capitol Plaza Hotel.

? Republican Sen. Pat Roberts seemed more at ease Wednesday than he has in months as he faced reporters following his re-election victory the night before, vowing that the new GOP majority in the Senate will quickly get to work on a host of issues that had been blocked by the previous Democratic leadership.

After pre-election polls had shown him locked in a tight race with independent challenger Greg Orman — an average of the polls showed him trailing by a fraction of a percentage point — Roberts emerged with the winner by an 11-point margin, winning in 102 of the state’s 105 counties.

“I would think the first thing we would do for the first time in six years is we will pass a budget,” Roberts said. “Second, we will do our appropriations bills, that’s the spending bills. You can use that to rein in spending of course, but you can also target things from various agencies where you think there’s a regulation that you think is completely unreasonable and just take their money away. That does tend to get their attention.”

As the ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Roberts is in line to become the next chairman of that panel. During the campaign, he was harshly criticized by Orman for failing to show up at most of the committee’s hearings and for voting against the latest version of the Farm Bill.

During his news conference, though, Roberts said there had not been much reason for him to attend because the Democratic majority would not allow Republican amendments to bills.

And while he said he does not expect any major changes to the Farm Bill, which funds crop insurance, crop subsidies and other farm programs, he does plan to tackle other issues affecting agriculture, including environmental policy.

“When we care more about a prairie chicken than we do farmers and ranchers, or their oil and gas production that is there on that land, I think we have to change our priorities,” he said.

On health care, Roberts said Republicans would soon pass a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but he conceded the President Barack Obama would not sign it. From there, he said, the GOP plans to tackle specific health care issues, including reimbursements to rural hospitals.

“I don’t know how many speeches I would make on the Senate floor about my concern with Obamacare and how 73 critical access hospitals are not getting the proper Medicare reimbursement,” Roberts said. “We stand in danger of losing those.”

One of the trade-offs in the Affordable Care Act that was meant to help pay for subsidized insurance for individuals was a reduction in Medicare reimbursement rates to hospitals. That was supposed to be offset by reductions in the amount of “uncompensated care” they provide because most individuals would be covered by either Medicaid or private insurance.

But the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the mandate that states expand their Medicaid programs, saying the federal government could only make that an option. Kansas, under Gov. Sam Brownback and the Republican-dominated Legislature, has declined to take part in the Medicaid expansion, meaning hospitals are seeing the reduced Medicare rates, but not any increase in payments by Medicaid or private insurance.

Roberts, however, refused to criticize the Brownback administration for that decision, while insisting that Medicare reimbursement rates still need to be restored.

Roberts also serves on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, or HELP Committee, which oversees education policy, including the federal law currently known as No Child Left Behind. That law, which directs federal funding for special education, Title I schools and a host of other programs, was scheduled for reauthorization in 2007 at the end of the George W. Bush administration, but neither chamber of Congress has been able to reach agreement on a new bill.

As a result, the Obama administration began offering states waivers from the requirements of that law if they were willing to adopt other reform initiatives, including requirements that teacher evaluations be tied to student achievement.

Roberts said that’s an area that the HELP Committee, under its presumed new chairman, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, will tackle quickly.

“I think that Mr. Alexander knows that that is absolutely crucial, and as a member of that committee I know it as well,” he said.