ABSTRACT
An important, even fateful, Republican decision was to schedule Medicaid before Medicare on the House agenda, largely because it seemed an easier target. The Medicaid entitlement, though vital to its beneficiaries and important for moves account, was one relatively small part of the budget reconciliation, otherwise known as the Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1995. When the Republicans began putting together their 1995 budget resolution, early in March, neither the congressional Democrats nor the Clinton administration had decided whether or how to save Medicaid. A Republican strategy that was to prove hazardous was to combine budget cutting with the pursuit of collateral, sometimes ideological goals. The conference adopted a policy resolution that recommended against any unilateral caps on federal spending for Medicaid. The Republicans not only captured both houses of Congress, they won thirty of the governorships, for a gain of eleven.
