Category Archives: Legislature

Asa’s state of the private option address

Health care, Legislature, Politics, State government

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s health care reform speech last Thursday was what the State of the Union address ought to be but rarely is – an accurate definition of a problem respecting both sides, followed by a solution that actually has a chance of being enacted.

Hutchinson spoke last week at UAMS before an auditorium full of legislators, health care policymakers, and other interested listeners. The atmosphere was serious and expectant.

Hutchinson started his speech with a history lesson. One of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) expanded Medicaid in the states, but the Supreme Court had made that provision optional. Arkansas had created what Hutchinson called an “innovative” approach: using federal dollars to buy private health insurance instead of just pouring more money into Medicaid.

Hutchinson then accurately defined the two opposing viewpoints on the issue. Because of the private option, 200,000 Arkansans have health insurance, and hospitals are providing far less uncompensated care. However, the state will soon be responsible for up to 10 percent of the costs, which could equal $200 million by 2021. Opponents, he said, are “wise” to be concerned about this.

As he pointed out, the private option has paralyzed Arkansas politics. The votes in the two previous legislative sessions have been close enough that health care providers can’t completely rely on it. So many legislators campaigned this past election on ending the private option that its future is very much in doubt, but what about the 200,000 people?

Now for the solution. Hutchinson asked legislators to broaden the debate. Pointing to a single chart beside him, he said most Medicaid spending has nothing to do with the private option, so why argue over one slice of the pie? He asked legislators to approve the private option for two years, and to create a task force that will study health care reform in general for one year. The task force will produce recommendations based on principles such as minimizing the need for more revenues and increasing recipients’ accountability and work requirements.

It will be interesting where this goes. Arkansas is already involved in a promising health care reform process, the Arkansas Health Care Payment Improvement Initiative. Will the task force build on that, produce a different idea, or just tie a pretty ribbon on the private option and rename it so certain legislators can vote yes? We’ll know in a year, assuming the Legislature passes the bill that would create it.

At the end of the speech, Hutchinson remarked good-naturedly that he had not been interrupted by applause, so the audience clapped. The reason that had been the case was that audience members were listening intently – in order to learn important information, not for cues that would tell them to stand or sit in order to make a political point.

Contrast that with the State of the Union address, delivered two days earlier. President Obama’s speech had some good points in that it had a clear theme (middle-class economics) and a call for civil debate. But as is usually the case, it was marked by a list of proposals that had little chance of being enacted. Members of Congress played their expected parts. It was theater, not policymaking. Much of it will be ignored.

Not that there wasn’t some theater in the UAMS auditorium. Part of what Hutchinson was doing was buying time. He’s willing to change the private option, even significantly. But he wants neither to take health insurance from 200,000 people, nor to turn away the $1.3 billion in federal funds the private option will provide the state this fiscal year. After the speech, some legislators opposed to the private option expressed at least mild support because they said Hutchinson’s plan would end the private option in two years. That was not what he said.

But all that’s to be expected. This is politics. Hutchinson’s address changed the tone of the debate and offered a way forward. The legislation to create the task force has been filed, and there are good reasons for it to pass: Supporters don’t want the private option to fail, and Republicans opposed to the private option want their party’s governor to succeed.

Some still will oppose the plan, but what Hutchinson said won’t be ignored. Good speech.

M.L.K. and R.E. Lee

Legislature, State government

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Many Arkansans may not realize it, but the state celebrates two birthdays on the third Monday each January – Dr. Martin Luther King’s, and General Robert E. Lee’s. And that caught some people’s attention this week.

Arkansas has celebrated the two men together since 1985 as a result of an act signed by Gov. Bill Clinton. The combination was done out of convenience. Lee’s birthday, which is Jan. 19 (four days after King’s), was already being celebrated, and there were already so many holidays this time of year. As always, the secretary of state on Monday posted a sign on the State Capitol’s doors stating that offices were closed in honor of the two men.

Two other states, Mississippi and Alabama, also celebrate the two birthdays on the same day. Three other states also honor Lee, but not on the same day as King. Virginia, Lee’s home, separated them in 2000.

Arkansas’ dual holiday has become an issue this year, which happens to be 150 years after the end of the Civil War. Jason Tolbert, a contributor to the website Talk Business & Politics, pointed out the historical inconsistency of honoring King and the Confederate general on the same day. Secretary of State Mark Martin told Tolbert that his having to put both names on the same sign is “embarrassing to me.”

I caught Martin in the halls of the Capitol and asked if the word “embarrassing” was accurate. Yes, he said. Lee had many admirable qualities, but combining the holidays seems inappropriate.

On Wednesday, Rep. Fred Love, D-Little Rock, who is African-American, and Rep. Nate Bell, R-Mena, who is white, filed separate bills that would remove Lee from the holiday. Gov. Asa Hutchinson, his plate full during his first month in office, didn’t state a position when asked about it in a press conference.

Maybe this is much ado about nothing. Let’s be honest – many of us didn’t really honor either King or Lee Monday. For many of us who happened to work for the right employers, it was just a day off.

But the King-Lee holiday is not really about two men. As celebrated today, it’s a symbol of two very different eras – the Confederacy and the civil rights movement. The first should be remembered thoughtfully, and the second should be celebrated thoughtfully. There’s a difference.

The Civil War was not that long ago, and native-born white Arkansans my age grew up with the sense that “we” lost. Many years ago, I stopped having that sense.

If you think the war was not about slavery, then I’m not going to change your mind. Instead, I encourage you to research those who would know best – those who voted to secede.

Pay particular attention to Mississippi’s declaration of secession, a short document available online. Slavery was the secessionists’ justification for the war. The second paragraph begins, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.”

The secessionists said the Union “advocates negro equality” and that it was trying to “destroy our social system.” “We must either submit to degradation,” they declared, “and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property.”

Property.

Regardless of who lost the Civil War, ultimately, for many different reasons and over a long period of time, freedom won.

Isn’t that what should be celebrated on the third Monday of every January?

Can states fix what Congress messed up?

Debt and deficits, Legislature, Politics, State government, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Can the usual processes that created the $18 trillion national debt – now more than $57,000 for every American man, woman and child – also be used to pay it down?

If your answer is yes, then I encourage you to check the history books. Almost ever year since the nation was founded, the federal government has added to the national debt, and under current projections, the debt will grow bigger each year, year after year, as far as the eye can see.

It should be clear by now that our nation’s capital will not suddenly see the light of fiscal responsibility, so can anything be done to reverse the slide? Apparently not by Congress, so two separate national movements are attempting to amend the Constitution by employing a never-before-used process led by the states. Under Article 5 of the Constitution, 34 states can call a convention, which would then propose amendments that must be ratified by 38 of them.

One of those efforts, the Convention of the States, proposes an open-ended convention tasked with limiting the powers of the federal government, with suggested amendments that would require a balanced budget, enact term limits, redefine the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, etc. In Arkansas, supporters are considering two versions, according to one of its supporters, Rep. Bob Ballinger, R-Hindsville. He believes at least one will pass.

Nationwide, the effort faces a much steeper climb. The Convention of the States’ goals and its rhetoric are so conservative that it will have a tough time reaching 34 states, let alone 38. Also, the delegates would be free to propose whatever amendments they want, leading to fears of a “runaway convention.” Those fears are unfounded, because any proposed amendments still would require approval by 38 states. But the fear that something crazy might happen has cost the movement some allies.

The other effort, the Compact for a Balanced Budget, also is a long shot but would seem to have a better chance. Unlike the Convention of the States, the Compact proposes a single amendment. The amendment states that the government cannot spend more than it collects unless it borrows under a debt limit that can be increased only with approval by a majority of state legislatures. Also, all future tax increases would have to be passed by a two-thirds vote of Congress, though a majority vote could close loopholes or replace the income tax with a national sales tax.

With the Compact for a Balanced Budget, we know what we’re getting. The states that sign up agree to the wording upfront. The delegates would assemble, vote yes and go home.

Alaska and Georgia have already signed on as members of the Compact. Organizers see Arkansas as one of 30 other states they must have. Then they would have to sway six other states where passage would be harder.

In Arkansas, Rep. Nate Bell, R-Mena, pre-filed a Compact for a Balanced Budget bill before the legislative session began. He was one of the early supporters of the Convention of the States, and although he still favors it, he thinks this is a better way.

I like it, too, and not just because it has a better chance of passing. It creates a mechanism that helps Congress be more fiscally responsible. It gives states the ability to rein in Washington. It makes it hard for Congress to raise taxes, but not impossible, particularly not by closing some of the loopholes that riddle the tax code.

Bell, who is on the Compact for a Balanced Budget’s national board, plans to push his bill, HB1006, later in the session. Will it pass? It depends on a lot of factors. Legislators, including Bell and Ballinger, have a lot on their plates as they consider thousands of bills in three months’ time.

One of those is the Revenue Stabilization Act, passed each session since 1945. Because of that act, Arkansas has a mechanism in place to produce a balanced budget – which is one of the main reasons the state, unlike the federal government, always has one.

Want to be heard? Focus on state, not D.C.

Legislature, Politics, State government, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

A new governor has assumed office, and legislators have begun the 2015 legislative session, but if you’re like most interested Arkansas citizens, you probably care more about what’s happening in Washington, D.C., than about what’s happening in Little Rock.

That’s understandable. The issues are bigger and the stakes higher in our nation’s capital. National politics lends itself better to story lines, heroes and villains. It’s the American flag to which we pledge allegiance.

Of course you should care about national politics, and you should try to change it for the better. But if that’s all you care about, and state politics is just an afterthought, I encourage you to focus more of your thoughts a little closer to home, for two reasons.

One is that in our state capital, democracy still works, and in Washington, it doesn’t – not the way it’s supposed to work, anyway. Washington politics these days is about pleasing special interests, scoring political points, and maintaining power. Republicans and Democrats have dug into their trenches and are mostly shooting at each other across no man’s land, and that’s not likely to change regardless of how much you or I yell at the TV.

In Little Rock, meanwhile, Gov. Asa Hutchinson and legislators will engage in civil discourse about important issues during this legislative session. How civil? House Speaker Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia, appointed Democrats to chair four of the House committees, which would never happen in Washington. And how important? Over three months, legislators will cut taxes and decide if the state should build a new $100 million prison or instead change the laws so that fewer people are incarcerated. While elected officials in Washington will bicker endlessly about health care, elected officials in Little Rock eventually will come to a decision regarding the private option and the 200,000 people it serves.

The other reason to focus a little more on state politics and a little less on Washington? Let’s turn to the late Dr. Stephen Covey, author of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” Covey taught that we all reside in the middle of two concentric circles, a larger “circle of concern” and a smaller “circle of influence.” The circle of concern is what we care about but can’t affect. The circle of influence, we can affect. Invest your energies in the circle of influence, Covey taught.

Very few of us non-billionaires can influence what happens in Washington. Very few of us will ever meet President Obama.

But Arkansas governors are highly accessible. Hutchinson probably will appear at some event in your community or in a nearby one before too long, and you can approach him to share a concern or just ask him about his grandchildren.

State legislators, moreover, are regular people with limited staffs. They consider thousands of bills in three months’ time. On some issues they receive lots of constituent input, but on others not so much, so the words of a few carry a lot of weight. Sen. Jake Files, R-Fort Smith, thought of two instances off the top of his head where he sponsored and passed a bill based on the urging of a single constituent – one that changed a restitution law after someone’s four-wheeler was stolen, and one allowing police to administer a saliva test to suspected drunk drivers.

“Literally one or two phone calls can make a big difference in a yes vote or a no vote,” he said.

So Mr. Regular Arkansan, if you can make your case to your legislator, and if you’re a little persistent, you can change public policy in your circle of influence, which is the state of Arkansas.

Isn’t that better than yelling at the TV?