Busy Wednesday in Kansas Senate as veto session now in full swing

Republicans in the Kansas Senate voted Wednesday morning to override Governor Laura Kelly’s veto of the abortion reversal notification bill.

“This is a choice,” said Senate President Susan Wagle. “This is a choice that we’re making available to women who are making a difficult decision and it’s information. We live in an information society and people make choices all the time, but they can only make a choice when they know there’s another option.”

That vote was 27-13 and goes to the Kansas House. Also on Wednesday, the Senate came one vote short on a procedural motion from Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley from pulling the Medicaid expansion bill out of committee and putting it on General Orders. The final vote there was 23-11.

“It goes without saying, the second obstacle to that would have been to get the 27 votes necessary to bring it up on General Orders,” said Hensley. “I think it is significant that 23 people in this body decided that this issue is worth having a debate and responding to our constituents who want us to have that debate.”

Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning voted pass on the motion. He explained why.

“I vote pass, because I’m not saying no, I’m saying this policy isn’t ready,” said Denning. “Since session started, I’ve been transparent with my district, the media and the Governor’s office. It is not prudent for the Senate body to support Medicaid expansion spending plan until we know how the Supreme Court rules on our K-12 finance bill we sent over.”

With the state’s final budget still to work through, we’ll see if further dealing is done in the next few days on either issue.