Category Archives: Legislature

The year’s top posts

Happy new year! Here are independentarkansas’ most-read posts from 2018.

Jim Hendren Joyce Elliott

How to disagree agreeably about the NFL anthem controversy. Here’s how Sen. Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs, a conservative Republican Senate leader, and Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, who grew up in segregated schools, handle their differences on that hot-button issue. By far the year’s top-performing post.

Your pharmacist doesn’t want to see you now. Read how changes in pharmacy benefit manager disbursements left Arkansas druggists struggling to turn a profit. Legislators later met in special session to address the issue, but you can bet it won’t go away.

Why five legislators are going to jail. Another one has since been indicted, and the investigation is continuing.

Project Zero

How one video changed a life. A report by KTHV’s Dawn Scott led one couple to provide a home for a young man who needed a family. It’s the fourth-biggest performing post despite being online less than three weeks.


Obamacare ruling: Next 20 years more important than next two

Seema Verna

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verna hands a waiver to Gov. Asa Hutchinson allowing the state to require Arkansas Works recipients to work. Hutchinson opposes Obamacare but has championed the Arkansas Works program created as a result of the law.

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

How significant was the federal judge’s ruling last week that Obamacare is unconstitutional? We might not know for another two years, but the bigger question is, what happens in the next 20?

The judge ruled in a lawsuit that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is unconstitutional because the U.S. Supreme Court’s original reasoning could no longer stand.

Back in 2013, the Supremes ruled the individual mandate to buy health insurance is constitutional because the penalty for not doing so is a “tax.”

In December, Congress repealed the penalty when it passed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act. A Texas-led coalition of 20 states, including Arkansas under Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, sued arguing that without the penalty, there’s no tax, which means Obamacare itself is no longer constitutional.

Texas Judge Reed O’Connor agreed, though he did not issue an injunction, which means nothing happens while the ruling is under appeal. Now the case winds its way through the system, perhaps ending at the Supreme Court. Continue reading →

Don’t be like Kansas and Oklahoma

Arkansas Legislature, Arkansas Works, Jeremy Hutchinson, Mickey Gates, Jim HendrenBy Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

By the time this upcoming legislative session is over, taxes in Arkansas undoubtedly will have been cut. The question is, how much will lawmakers learn from Oklahoma’s and Kansas’ mistakes?

Kansas made big tax cuts without corresponding spending cuts thanks to Gov. Sam Brownback’s allegiance to the theory that cutting taxes would stimulate the economy and generate more revenues. Oklahoma cut taxes while relying on oil and gas revenues that fell as those markets tanked.

The result is that Kansas’ budget has been a disaster for years. In fact, it’s Exhibit A when policymakers talk about how not to cut taxes. Finally, in 2017 the Legislature passed more than $1.2 billion in tax increases and then overrode a veto by Brownback, who was determined to keep digging a hole. In November, the longtime Republican state elected a Democrat, Laura Kelly, as governor.

A little closer to home, Oklahoma cut taxes and then dealt with budget issues so severe that almost one in five schools were holding classes four days a week. This year, the governor and Legislature passed a $430 million tax increase to fund education just before teachers staged a nine-day walkout.

One lesson learned is, if you vote for a tax cut today but don’t cut spending enough, then you might really be  voting for a tax increase down the road – or at least, forcing someone else to vote for one.  Continue reading →

This could make the legislative session even crazier

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Things get crazy when 135 legislators gather at the Capitol to consider thousands of bills in three months’ time. Sometimes something happens that makes things crazier.

This upcoming legislative session, it could be the same issue that’s caused much of the craziness the past almost six years: Arkansas Works. This time, there’s a special reason why.  Continue reading →

Arkansas GOP still doesn’t hold majority of offices – yet

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Arkansas is now thoroughly Republican at the state and national levels, as evidenced by the party controlling all six congressional offices, all seven statewide offices and three-fourths of the Legislature, as well as winning the presidential election here every year since 1996.

At the county level? Not yet.

According to data crunched by the Republican Party of Arkansas, Democrats still control 839 the state’s 1,524 partisan offices at all levels, not including constables. That’s about 55 percent. Republicans control 663, or 43.5 percent. The other 22 offices are held by officials who are neither Republican nor Democrat. Continue reading →