📄 A COVID-19 commission moves forward.
◉ An effort led by Sen. Lisa Keim, R-Dixfield, to establish a commission that would review Maine's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, sailed unanimously through the Legislature's health panel on Wednesday. It sets up a sweeping review of the response led by Gov. Janet Mills and her administration.
◉ The tone on this has shifted sharply in two years. In 2021, the Mills administration testified against a similar effort from Keim in the heat of the pandemic. This time, the Maine Hospital Association joined the push with a set of reasons far disparate from those of the conservative Maine Policy Institute, which is critical of health policies at the state and federal levels.
◉ Expect the commission's work to lead to a boiled-down version of the debate of the last three years on education, public health and economic policies. There have been many national studies that have tried to balance those areas, with one from conservative economists giving Maine's response high marks.
♟️ One of Maine's senators is open to this debt ceiling workaround.
◉ Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, told Semafor reporter Joseph Zeballos-Roig that President Joe Biden should consider invoking a constitutional challenge to the federal debt limit as an escape from the current standoff with House Republicans on the issue.
◉ King said there are "some very strong legal arguments" surrounding the 14th Amendment, which says the validity public debts cannot be questioned. Biden has said he may make the argument that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional, but he does not appear to be ready to do it in this situation.
◉ That makes a deal between the White House and Republicans the likeliest situation here. Advisers to both Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-California, have ramped up their meetings in recent days. Rep. Jared Golden, a centrist Democrat from Maine's 2nd District, took a dim view last week of any 14th Amendment workaround and expects some sort of budget deal. |
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