SANTA FE, N.M. — SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico lawmakers moved quickly Thursday at a special legislative session to prop up funding for food assistance and rural health care services in response to President Donald Trump’s cuts to federal spending on Medicaid and nutrition programs.
The Democratic-led Legislature sent a flurry of bills to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham that include more than $16 million to sustain food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and additional funds to bolster food banks, as the federal government ends SNAP eligibility for many noncitizens and changes benefit calculations for others.
“We need to act to make sure that New Mexicans don’t go hungry with SNAP changes at the federal level,” Democratic state Sen. George Muñoz of Gallup said.
Another $50 million would help sustain medical services at rural health clinics and hospitals that rely heavily on Medicaid spending.
Republicans in the legislative minority voted in unison against the spending provisions, arguing big Medicaid changes are still far away and that New Mexico should focus on reducing errors in benefit distributions.
At the same time, Democrats and some GOP legislators voted to backfill subsidies to health insurance on New Mexico’s Affordable Health Care exchange in case federal credits are allowed to expire. The federal subsidies are a major sticking point of the budget standoff in Washington that prompted the federal government shutdown Wednesday.
In a news release, Lujan Grisham said she’ll sign the bills to protect families from being priced out of insurance and ensure health care services are provided in small communities.
Many federal health care changes under Trump’s big bill don’t kick in until 2027 or later, and Democratic legislators in New Mexico acknowledged that their bills are only a temporary bandage.
“Some of the most significant (federal) cuts are delayed a few years, and these are deeply significant,” said state Rep. Nathan Small of Las Cruces, lead sponsor of the spending bill. “I want to make sure that we’re all thinking of, not hundreds of millions, but billions of dollars of reduced Medicaid support to our state.”
Trump’s big bill is prompting urgent action in several Democratic states, but not in Republican ones.
“These are temporary fixes,
New Mexico Legislature approves bills to prop up rural health care
