Mississippi needs federal disaster relief, says Gov. Tate Reeves

Federal support for disaster relief is critical for the people of Mississippi, the state’s governor, Tate Reeves, said Friday at the World Economy Summit in Washington, DC.

His remarks come after the federal government declined to provide disaster aid to the neighboring state of Arkansas following a recent series of deadly storms, prompting complaints from Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“We actually have a request before the administration, because we received many of the same storms that Arkansas and Tennessee and others received,” Reeves, a Republican, told Semafor’s David Weigel.

Mississippi is still waiting for a response from Washington on its request, which was submitted in early April.

The denial of federal assistance to Arkansas has raised questions over whether the Trump administration plans to require states to bear more of the financial burden for relief and reconstruction following disasters.

“That’s what we’ve got to figure out: if the rules of the game are going to change,” said Reeves, referring to the longstanding practice of the federal government providing 75% of the funding for disaster relief, with state and local governments paying 25%.

Reeves also addressed the debate within the Republican Party over potential cuts to Medicaid funding. The governor said that reducing the federal government’s share of Medicaid funding for able-bodied adults is a good idea, and that the Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid to people that shouldn’t be receiving it.

“If there’s going to be reductions in spending at the federal level, the best and smartest way in which to do that is to take that 90% match on the Affordable Care Act and reduce it back towards what the Feds pay on the traditional Medicaid population,” he said, referring to the narrower pool of individuals who qualified for federal assistance prior to the act’s passage in 2010. “It takes benefits away from no one that currently has it, unless the individual states choose to take those away.”