Category Archives: Politics

11 expectations, but not quite predictions, for the new year

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

This is the part of the calendar when columnists sometimes make predictions for the new year. Let’s be up front about one thing: I can’t predict the future.

That said, here are 11 expectations for 2019.

– Tax cuts. They’re happening in Arkansas. Gov. Asa Hutchinson wants to cut the top rate from 6.9 percent to 5.9 percent. He sees it as a competitiveness issue with other states. On Dec. 7, he told the Arkansas School Boards Association that the governor of Massachusetts “gasped” when Hutchinson told him how high our state’s rate is.

– Health care. The big controversy in Arkansas is over the requirement that some recipients of the Arkansas Works health insurance program must report they are working or engaging in other productive activities. That controversy will end early next year when a federal judge rules against that requirement. He’s already ruled against a similar one in Kentucky. If that happens while the Legislature is debating funding the division that runs the program, opponents will use it as ammunition to try to kill it, as they have in the past. But ultimately, Arkansas Works will be funded.

– Highways. The Legislature will refer to voters a ballot initiative for 2020 that primarily relies on raising diesel taxes and extending the half-cent sales tax funding the Connecting Arkansas Program. Continue reading →

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In December, Congress repealed the penalty when it passed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act.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 →

These three are my Arkansans of the Year

Arkansans of the YearBy Steve Brawner , © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

In American democracy, the gap between what is and what should be is often wide. But sometimes the ideal and the real converge, and when they do, it’s a beautiful thing. Such was the case in the Little Rock mayor’s race.

At a time when so many elections are a choice between the lesser of evils, Mayor-elect Frank Scott, Baker Kurrus and Warwick Sabin offered the opposite: a choice between the best of goods. Time magazine has its Person of the Year. They are my Arkansans of the Year.

Scott, Kurrus and Sabin each brought strengths to the campaign. 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 →