Category Archives: Legislature

We won the lottery, but who bought the ticket?

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Should welfare recipients be required to pay back the state if they win the lottery? Maybe the better question is, should all of us?

Those questions came to mind after hearing a presentation by Rep. John Payton, R-Wilburn, of his House Bill 1825 before the House Rules Committee at the State Capitol Wednesday.

The bill would require lottery winners to reimburse the state for their last 10 years of Department of Human Services benefits, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly the food stamp program.

Payton said the lottery is a bad deal for poor people, who gamble their sparse dollars with the odds stacked mightily against them. This arrangement would make them think twice about doing that and remind them that their benefits come from the taxpayers.

In addition to Payton, the bill has 26 co-sponsors in the House, but it’s likely not going far. One committee member requested a fiscal impact statement, which will delay the bill’s progress. Legislators are hoping to go home at the end of March, which is fast approaching.

Still, if part of the idea is to make welfare recipients consider the source of their government benefits, then let’s consider the bigger picture: As a nation, we are all receiving government freebies.

In 2017, the Congressional Budget Office projects the United States government will spend $4 trillion but collect only $3.4 trillion, producing a deficit of $559 billion. That means the government is spending about $1,700 more than it collects per American, or almost $7,000 for a family of four.

Think you don’t benefit from that? Of that $4 trillion, almost a fourth went to Social Security in 2016, which benefits all of us – recipients directly, future recipients because it offers a guaranteed retirement plan, and families because they expend fewer resources taking care of their elderly relatives. (Yes, there’s a trust fund – but not really. In effect, the tax dollars go into one pot.) Another $588 billion goes to Medicare, which offers the same benefits. About that same amount pays for the United States to maintain by far the largest military in the world, which we’re all generally glad we have even if some of us would be OK with it being a little smaller.

Need more examples? The interstates on which we drive are no longer funded entirely by the gas taxes we pay at the pump. They are now funded partly out of the indebted general fund. The public schools we attend at a cost of $9,400 per Arkansas student annually also are funded partly by federal dollars and therefore by federal debt. And contrary to popular belief, only 1 percent of the budget goes to foreign aid, which often directly benefits Americans (for example, by buying food produced in America).

Finally, and this is really important, deficit spending does more than just allow these popular programs to continue. It infuses the economy with extra cash borrowed from future generations without their permission – stolen, in other words. We all live better because the government is writing $559 billion in hot checks this year, and putting it into the economy. Modern American life is being propped up by our grandchildren’s labor.

The frustration that many Americans feel toward welfare recipients is based on their belief that they are receiving unearned benefits that trap them in a cycle of poverty. And yet as a nation we are all receiving unearned benefits that trap us in a cycle of debt. These habits enable us to buy prosperity and security we have not fully earned. We’re all welfare queens, which is why the national debt – the accumulation of all these annual deficits – has reached $19.9 trillion, or more than $61,000 for every American. Most of that has accumulated in the last 16 years, meaning we were the ones who benefitted most.

There will come a point when the nation either chooses a different path, or is forced to do so. At some point in the future, the bill will come due. It always does.

If you and I are not around, then congratulations to us. We lived in a rich country during a rich era, and we received a lot of government benefits we never had to pay for.

In other words, we already won the lottery.

Death, taxes and Lake View

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

We’ve all heard the old Benjamin Franklin adage that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. For many years Arkansans have been able to add “public schools getting more money” to that list.

That’s because of a series of 1992-2007 court decisions in a case initially filed by the Lake View School District, a small, poor district in the Delta. Those decisions clarified that the state has a constitutional responsibility to ensure schools everywhere are adequate and equitable. The decisions basically required the state to fund schools first without regard to how much money was readily available or how it would affect other state priorities.

Since then, any debate about public school funding started and ended with two words: “Lake” and “View.” Nobody has wanted a repeat of that experience, where judges, justices and special masters stood over the state’s shoulder making sure it was filling in all the circles to their satisfaction.

As a result, while other states have cut education funding, Arkansas has always increased it – not by much lately, but by at least enough to stay out of court. In fact, the state’s public school districts not only have enough to fund their operations but between them have saved up $790 million in their net legal balances. A bill filed this legislative session by Rep. Mark Lowery, R-Maumelle, would require districts to keep no more than 20 percent of their revenues in those balances and use the rest for other purposes.

This year, as in years past, a legislative committee decided months ago that schools would receive an increase – this time about 1 percent in total per pupil foundation funding, the primary way schools are funded. Under that so-called adequacy report, whose recommendations the full Legislature generally accepts with little debate, in 2018 each school district will receive $6,713 per pupil, and that’s not including numerous other sources of local, state and federal funding that pushed the cost of educating each Arkansas student to about $9,400 as of 2013, according to the Census Bureau.

That’s right. If you have two kids in school, you’re getting about $19,000 worth of government benefits every year, and that’s before you drive on a road, call a fire department, get help with your parents’ health care costs through Medicare and/or Medicaid, or are protected by the military and law enforcers.

Anyway, back to Lake View, which is very slowly exerting less control, as evidenced by the fact that the 1 percent increase was less than it used to be, for a lot of reasons. One, naturally, is that the longer something fades into the past, the less it’s remembered, and there aren’t many policymakers left in Little Rock who were serving when all those Lake View decisions were coming down from the courts. Meanwhile, some state expenses have continued to rise – a good example being health care – at the same time that schools have always been guaranteed a raise. Plus, legislators always want to cut taxes, and that’s harder to do when you always must spend more money on schools.

Finally, there’s this really, really important fact: There are no Supreme Court justices left who had anything to do with those Lake View decisions. The last, Justice Paul Danielson, retired after the 2016 elections. No other justice has been on the court longer than since 2010, so no one knows how they would rule if Lake View were to be reconsidered. For what it’s worth, some of those justices have ruled in one 2012 case, Kimbrell v. McCleskey, that went a little against Lake View by saying certain school districts that collect extra money through property taxes can keep them rather than share them with other districts.

So schools have gotten a lot of money for a long time, other needs must be addressed, legislators always would love to cut taxes, and a whole new cast of policymakers remember less and less about Lake View, and are less scared of stepping past the vague line it drew in the sand. Plus, lawyers can make some pretty good money suing the state over this stuff.

So here’s a prediction and another certainty. The prediction is the state will wind up in another school funding case eventually.

The certainty is that it won’t be called “Lake View.” That district was forced to consolidate with Barton-Lexa in 2004 and no longer exists.

Tort reform: Shades of gray

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Arkansas legislators sometimes cast difficult votes on shades-of-gray issues where values conflict and where it comes down to which side they think is more right or less wrong. In November 2018, so will voters.

That’s because the biggest race on the ballot won’t involve candidates. Instead, it’s looking like the biggest issue will be a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit how much juries can award in a lawsuit. It’s going to be a heck of a fight. In fact, it already is.

Every two years, legislators are allowed under the Constitution to refer three amendments to the voters, but this time they plan to limit it to two, one each from the House and the Senate. Thirty-one amendments were proposed between both chambers, but it’s been clear for a while that the Senate would focus on a tort reform measure. Senate Joint Resolution 8, sponsored by Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, has 14 co-sponsors in the 35-member Senate and 53 co-sponsors in the 100-member House. It is backed, strongly, by a coalition of powerful business groups under the umbrella of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce.

The amendment would do four things. First, it would cap punitive damages – those that really punish a bad actor – at three times the compensatory damage awarded each claimant, with an exception created for intentional conduct. Legislators could vote to increase the cap with a two-thirds vote. Second, it would cap non-economic damages (pain and suffering) at $250,000 per claimant, or $500,000 to the beneficiaries if the victim dies. Third, it would cap lawyers’ contingency fees at one-third the total judgment. Finally, it would give legislators the final say in various rules for the courts and the Arkansas Supreme Court, a provision included because supporters say the Court otherwise could just ignore the rest of the amendment.

On Tuesday, the all-Republican Senate State Agencies and Government Affairs Committee advanced only that measure to the full Senate, politely hearing but never seriously considering the other Senate proposals. But it only passed 5-3, even though you would think Republicans would be totally for it because it’s pro-business and anti-lawyer. One senator who didn’t raise his hand, Sen. Terry Rice, R-Waldron, said afterwards only that he “wasn’t ready to vote.”

On Thursday, the full Senate approved it, but again, not overwhelmingly. A number of senators initially declined to vote until they saw the initial count, and then one by one, the number rose until it had enough votes. It was pretty dramatic, actually.

It still must pass the House, which it should do. Assuming it makes the ballot, then voters will be lobbied hard by well-funded opponents – the business community and the healthcare community on one side versus the legal community on the other.

Supporters will say that under current laws, businesses and healthcare providers must defend themselves against dubious lawsuits with the threat of a jackpot verdict always hanging over their heads. Small business owners live in fear of a lawsuit that will put them out of business. Doctors and hospitals pay sky-high medical malpractice insurance rates and order unnecessary tests and procedures to keep from being sued. Without tort reform, big employers will bring, or take, their jobs to other states.

Opponents will argue the amendment sets penalties so low that they don’t even amount to a slap on the wrist for big businesses. They’ll say it puts a price tag on human life, weakens a fundamental right to a trial by jury, and assumes Arkansas juries will not make commonsense decisions. Even some Republicans say it interferes with individuals paying their lawyer whatever they want. Finally, the part about the Legislature telling the Arkansas Supreme Court how to set its own rules – that was one of the things troubling Sen. Rice.

Tort reform is a big issue, and it will be fought with big dollars. But for many voters, it will be about the small: the local hardware store owner afraid of losing everything he’s worked for; the rural family doctor contemplating closing her practice and moving to a big-city hospital that will take care of her malpractice insurance; the child who lost his daddy because of a corporation’s negligence.

In other words, there’s a lot of gray, or at least, there’s a lot of black and white on both sides. You ready to vote?

All politics is now national

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

“All politics is local,” the late U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill used to say, but that’s no longer the case. Now, all politics is national.

That’s according to Dr. Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political science professor who spoke at the Clinton School of Public Service Thursday.

Abramowtiz said straight ticket voting, where voters choose candidates from the same party in all races, reached its highest level in 2012 in the 60 years that it’s been studied, and preliminary research shows 2016 no doubt followed that trend. That’s increasingly true whether voters are strong partisans, weak partisans, or independents who lean toward one party or the other. Most of those last folks are just “closet partisans” who won’t admit to themselves or to others that they are really a Republican or Democrat.

Abramowitz said this trend is being fueled by two causes: the increasing influence of presidential elections on down-ballot races, and the rise of “negative partisanship.” That’s where Americans are increasingly voting in partisan ways not because they like their party more but because they dislike the other party so much.

It wasn’t long ago that states and districts commonly selected one party’s candidate for president and the other party’s candidates in some of the congressional and other major races. The most famous example in Arkansas occurred in 1968, when voters pulled the lever for independent presidential candidate George Wallace, Democratic Sen. William Fulbright, and Republican Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller. Even as Democrats dominated Arkansas politics until 2010, the state was voting for the Republican in every presidential election starting in 1980 except for 1992 and 1996, when a native son was on the ballot.

Back then, Arkansas Democrats could differentiate themselves from the national party even if they were more liberal than their constituents by restraining their impulses and emphasizing their independence.

Now, it’s all about the party and the presidential candidate. Asked by American National Election Studies to rate parties on a temperature scale with 100 being hottest and 0 being coldest, since 1978 Americans have consistently rated their own party around 70 degrees. However, the opposing party had dropped from just below 50 degrees to 30 degrees by 2012. Fifty-eight percent of Democrats rated President Trump at zero, and 56 percent of Republicans gave Hillary Clinton the same score. Sen. Mark Pryor’s incumbency and last name netted him all of 39 percent against Sen. Tom Cotton in 2014, when Pryor was one of four Democratic incumbent senators to lose in states that had voted for Republican Mitt Romney two years earlier. In 2016, all 34 Senate races were won by the candidate whose presidential candidate won the state. In fact, the only two incumbent senators who lost were Republicans in states won by Clinton. Of the 435 U.S. House seats, 400 were won by the candidate whose party’s presidential candidate won their district.

The old tools – incumbency, principled leadership, dedicated constituent service, even bringing home the bacon – simply don’t cut it any more. Pity the Democratic state legislators in Arkansas who try to buck the trend by explaining to 30,000 (in the House) and 86,000 (in the Senate) constituents why they’re still Democrats but different than Nancy Pelosi. That’s why Democrats in this state are either losing, not running for re-election, or switching parties, as three state legislators did following the November elections.

In hindsight, Gov. Mike Beebe’s 64-36 re-election in 2010 against a decent Republican opponent, and subsequent high poll numbers throughout the rest of his term, remain one of the most impressive political achievements of recent years. Of course, he didn’t have to run in 2014, as Pryor did.

Abramowitz did not offer much hope for Arkansas Democrats, or for the declining numbers of us truly independent voters, or for people who just don’t like partisan politics. We’re now trapped in a cycle. Politics in Washington, D.C., is becoming increasingly confrontational, which fuels voter disgust mostly with the other party, which encourages even more confrontational behavior in Washington, D.C.

So for the foreseeable future, all politics, or at least most of it, will be national. I wonder what Tip O’Neill, the dealmaker, would have to say about that. I wonder if he even would have been elected.

Follow the money

Rep. Jana Della Rosa, R-Rogers, argues for House Bill 1427 in committee.

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

There’s a scene in “All the President’s Men,” the movie about the Washington Post reporters who dogged the Nixon White House until the president resigned over Watergate. Reporter Bob Woodward, played by Robert Redford, meets in a darkened garage with his background source, “Deep Throat,” played by Hal Holbrook, and says the story is stuck. “Follow the money. … Just follow the money,” Holbrook’s character tells him.

It’s as true today as it was then. It’s my experience covering the State Capitol that most elected officials at the state level are decent folks, and when they compromise, it’s more often out of strategic necessity than a failure of character. Still, if you want to know the whole story in politics, you always have to follow the money.

Rep. Jana Della Rosa, R-Rogers, agrees, which is why, just as she did in her first legislative session in 2015, she’s sponsoring a bill that would make it much easier for any citizen with an internet connection to do what Woodward was trying to do.

House Bill 1427 would require candidates for constitutional offices (governor, attorney general, etc.), judicial offices, and state legislative seats to file all of their campaign finance reports online in a new, searchable database.

Here’s how that would change things. Currently, anyone can go on the Arkansas secretary of state’s website (votenaturally.org) and pull up the campaign finance reports for each individual candidate, one month at a time.

If House Bill 1427 passes, journalists, watchdog groups and average citizens could quickly search everything in the database and determine which lobbyists or political action committees have donated how much to whose campaigns. If an industry gets special treatment under the law, it would be much easier to see if campaign donations might have played a part.

If that last paragraph sounds like I’m bashing elected officials, I’m not. Winning elected office requires campaigning, and campaigning requires money, and then afterwards the winning candidates must make decisions that affect their donors. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the one we have.

Efforts to limit campaign donations in recent years have failed, partly because of court decisions and partly because ours is a free market society where money will find its way to power. But we also have an open society where information is often even more powerful than money. So one very workable solution that is consistent with both a free market society and an open society is to make it really easy for average Arkansans to follow the money.

Della Rosa’s bill failed in 2015 based on some good excuses and some lame ones. Legislators said many candidates did not have access to reliable internet service, and they complained about the state’s balky online reporting system – both very good excuses. In 2016, Della Rosa pushed through an appropriation to build a new and very good online system that cost $670,000. So that good excuse is out. There’ve been two more years of improving internet service across the state, and the bill would let legislators in truly underserved areas file their reports the old-fashioned way, by paper. So that good excuse is pretty much gone, too.

That just leaves the lame excuses, such as the one offered in 2015 by one legislator who said he represented a district with a large paper industry presence, so he couldn’t vote for a bill that would reduce the use of paper.

Della Rosa’s bill passed the House State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee comfortably Wednesday on a voice vote. Several legislators spoke supportively. Rep. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, said the bill would force him to change his habits, but he was willing to do so because of the good that would come of it.

The bill now moves to the full House, where it was expected to be debated Friday and where it must pass by a two-thirds majority because it changes two initiated acts approved by the voters. Then it must pass through a Senate committee and the full Senate before landing on the governor’s desk.

Every legislator who votes for the bill is inviting more accountability and transparency. Instead of forcing voters to stumble around a darkened garage, they’re bringing a flashlight and shining it on themselves.

To borrow a line from another movie, “Jerry Maguire,” if it passes, it will show us the money. If we don’t follow it, it’s our fault.