With a little over two weeks before New Mexico lawmakers will convene in Santa Fe for a special legislative session to respond to anticipated federal spending cuts, Republican leaders are calling on the governor to consult with them on the agenda and consider a host of other issues they’d like to address instead.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a news release earlier this month announcing the Oct. 1 start date of the session along with a few actions the Legislature would likely consider to make up for federal cuts to rural hospitals, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and public broadcasting. It also said she was in “discussions” with the Legislature to address behavioral health and criminal justice issues.
But Republican leaders in the House and Senate said in a letter Monday that they have not been consulted on any of the specifics about the session, and that Democrats’ fears of federal cuts are unwarranted this early.
“Republican legislators should be given the same courtesy and opportunity to thoroughly review the fiscal impact and programmatic requirements associated with these proposals,” according to the letter. “This review is particularly necessitated because your public statements have, unfortunately, left the impression that New Mexicans will immediately lose Medicaid and SNAP benefits. Needless to say, nothing could be further from the truth.”
The letter goes on to state changes in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” President Donald Trump signed July 4 are “highly complex,” and changes to Medicaid and SNAP “will not become effective until January 2027 at the earliest.”
The letter’s authors said the Legislature should direct more immediate consideration to other issues in the state, including, crime, the state’s child welfare department, medical malpractice reform and homelessness, according to the letter.
They urged her to issue a proclamation for the session that enables lawmakers to consider all of those topics.
“The people of New Mexico are convinced these are the real emergencies facing our state and we ask for your leadership in helping provide the Legislature with the opportunity to work in a bipartisan basis to adopt long overdue solutions to these most pressing problems,” according to the letter.
A statement provided by the governor’s Deputy Communications Director Jodi McGinnis Porter notes that Lujan Grisham “has been working closely with the majority in the legislature to craft an agenda that has consensus. However, the Governor proposed and continues to argue for urgent public safety legislation now and in future legislative sessions.”
The special session’s current topics, the statement continues, “are not new and have been the subject of discussions since the passage of the federal Republican budget bill H.R.1. ”
The statement also says, “The notion that New Mexicans’ will not lose crucial benefits until 2027 is false…The country as a whole and New Mexico in particular will see a substantial reduction in federal SNAP benefits as well as the loss of federal subsidies for healthcare premiums in the immediate future. In the special session, the state will act to blunt the worst of these attacks on New Mexicans’ cost of living.”
This story was updated following publication to include a response from the governor's office.
