SANTA FE, N.M. — SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) \u2014 New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a package of bills Friday aimed at shoring up food assistance, rural health care and public broadcasting in response to recently enacted federal cuts.<\/p>\n
The new legislation responds to President Donald Trump’s big bill as well as fear that health insurance rates will rise with the expiration of COVID-era subsidies to the Affordable Care Act exchange in New Mexico. Exchange subsidies are a major point of contention in the Washington budget standoff and related federal government shutdown.<\/p>\n
New Mexico would set aside $17 million to backfill the federal credits if they are not renewed, under legislation signed by the governor.<\/p>\n
The Democratic-led Legislature met on Wednesday and Thursday to approved $162 million in state spending on rural health care, food assistance, restocking food banks, public broadcast and more.<\/p>\n
Starting this year, New Mexico expects to lose about $200 million annually because of new federal tax cuts. But the state still has a large budget surplus thanks to booming oil production.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen federal support falls short, New Mexico steps up,\u201d Lujan Grisham said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Many federal health care changes under Trump’s big bill don\u2019t kick in until 2027 or later, and Democratic legislators in New Mexico acknowledged that their bills are only a temporary bandage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANTA FE, N.M. — SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) \u2014 New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a package…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[115559,966,28,6883,793,9290,787,97,252,9149,2601,253,2077,111,18907,9293,795],"class_list":["post-200736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-115559","tag-article","tag-business","tag-coronavirus","tag-general-news","tag-government-budgets","tag-government-programs","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-health-care-costs","tag-health-care-industry","tag-healthcare","tag-legislation","tag-politics","tag-subsidies","tag-u-s-government-shutdown","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}