Voucher 'threat' sparks debate

A high-powered group of Utah businessmen and health experts put forward Monday a plan providing affordable health insurance to an estimated 360,000 Utahns, while GOP legislative leaders are accused of saying that the plan may fail in the 2008 Legislature if leading businessmen don't support vouchers on November's ballot.

"I find this highly offensive — tying health insurance for needy people to education vouchers," said Rep. Phil Riesen, an East Millcreek Democrat who sits on a United Way/business health care subcommittee that put together the comprehensive health insurance plan. GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. is studying the plan to see if he will support it in the 2008 Legislature.

Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, said his comments before the United Way subcommittee — on which both Clark and Riesen sit — were misinterpreted.

"It was not my intent to tether those two issues together," said Clark, the second most powerful Republican in the Utah House.

"I've never had (such) a conversation with a colleague. It has not been a part of any (GOP) leadership conversation — tying health care and vouchers together," said Clark Monday. And he personally does not tie the two issues together, Clark added. "But I do think that those are all relevant issues for discussion."

However, another person at the meeting said he took Clark's comments not as a threat but the GOP leader's candid assessment of the possible political realities in the Legislature — as unpleasant as they may be.

Huntsman spokeswoman Lisa Roskelley said the governor supports both an expanded health-insurance plan to insure more Utahns and the Legislature's voucher program. "But he believes the issues should be vetted and decided on their own merits" and not politically tied together, she said.

Riesen said the implied threat — as he took it — was made in August, just as GOP legislative leaders put together their pro-voucher political issue committee, called the Informed Voter Project. Clark is among the GOP leaders who set up the PIC.

The PIC's aim, as detailed in a Sunday Deseret Morning News report, is to raise at least $300,000 to push the private-school, voucher-tuition plan that goes before voters Nov. 6. The PIC is holding town meetings across the state, with GOP legislators and others trying to inform residents about vouchers and what they will do, GOP legislative leaders say.

According to Riesen, Clark, when asked about the political chances in the Legislature of the broad health-insurance plan, told the health subcommittee that if local businesses don't support the voucher plan, there would be little chance of the health-insurance plan passing the GOP-dominated Legislature.