Steve Beshear’s Failed Policies Left Kentucky Worse Off

Tonight, Democrat leaders made the decision of selecting former Kentucky governor Steve Beshear to deliver their response to President Trump’s first address to Congress. In doing so, they have chosen a failed Democrat governor who left his state in shambles and saw his hand-picked successor for governor, who ran on Beshear’s legacy, lose by nearly double-digits.

As governor, Steve Beshear called his state’s disastrous experiment with Obamacare his “signature achievement” while the people of Kentucky experienced double-digit hikes to healthcare premiums under Obamacare’s co-op, Kynect. In 2014,  the co-op lost over $50 million and its largest private provider went out of business just a year later. As a result, Kentucky plummeted to 44^th on U.S. News’ state healthcare rankings. Beshear’s successor, current Republican Governor Matt Bevin, campaigned on dismantling Kynect and won in a landslide. Since replacing Beshear, Governor Bevin has wasted no time on his promise and ended Kentucky’s participation in the co-op.

It’s ironic that Democrats would choose a failed governor like Steve Beshear, whose policies left the Commonwealth worse off than he found it, to criticize the leadership of others. His reckless embrace of Obamacare had profoundly negative consequences for the Commonwealth, just as it has for Democrat leaders who have done the same across the country. Democrat governors embraced Obamacare, and now they have a 95-year low of only 16 chief executives. Choosing Steve Beshear to give the Democrat response to the president’s address tonight further proves how out of touch their party has become with the American people.