Governor Kasich was recently in Toledo to attend the Lincoln Day Dinner and talk with Ohioans about his proposed Jobs Budget. The Dispatch has more below:
TOLEDO — It was a political event, but Gov. John Kasich was of no mind to talk politics.
Instead, he focused on policy last night in a 34-minute speech to about 500 people at the Lucas County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner, the first of six such county GOP dinners on his schedule through spring.
The governor offered a shortened redux of the State of the State speech he delivered in Lima on Tuesday night, urging the Toledo faithful to get behind his proposed $63.3 billion two-year budget, while unabashedly touting his administration’s achievements.
Kasich’s litany of successes included 122,000 jobs created and an $8 billion deficit turned into a $1 billion surplus without raising taxes.
“We now in Ohio have momentum,” said Kasich, who said his budget was crafted out of a “moral obligation” to create jobs.
The blueprint, however, has received a lukewarm reception from the legislature’s Republican majorities; members question his call to expand Medicaid to 275,000 more low-income Ohioans.
As he did in Lima, Kasich passionately appealed for support of the Medicaid expansion, saying that “the Good Book says you don’t ignore the least among you.”
Noting that the expansion would save Ohioans $400 million over two years and bring in billions in federal money to insure the working poor, Kasich said: “Abraham Lincoln did what’s right to lift human beings, and our conservative Republican Party must do the same.”
Toledo Mayor Michael Bell, a Democrat-turned-independent who attended the dinner, called the Medicaid expansion “extremely important … because most of those people who do not have any type of insurance end up in emergency rooms, and that type of treatment is much more expensive.”
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