Category Archives: Politics

$23.33 less debt

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

The past couple of weeks showed two different ways to react when you don’t have enough money coming in: the Arkansas state government reaction, which is relatively effective, and the federal reaction, which isn’t at all.

Why the difference? One big reason is that Arkansas has a structure for responding to budget shortfalls and, more important, a culture that respects that structure. The federal government has neither nor the structure nor the culture.

Let’s start with Arkansas. The state’s budgetary decisions are governed by the Revenue Stabilization Act, a law passed in 1945 that is amended by the Legislature each budget cycle and sets the parameters for a balanced budget. Under the act, state spending is divided into categories: an essential Category A and a much smaller, spend-it-if-we’ve-got-it Category B.

State revenues this year have been a little lower than was budgeted because sales and corporate income tax revenues are lower than expected while income tax refunds have been higher.

Faced with a deficit, on Friday Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced that various state agencies would see total cuts of $70 million in Category B (out of a $5.33 billion general revenue budget) to make up the difference. The announcement took up part of a half-hour news conference that also covered the death penalty and the health care-related legislative session occurring this week. And that was that.

Contrast that with what happened in Washington, D.C., where members of Congress, faced with a looming government shutdown, managed last week to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government for another week – a process that happens so often these days that Americans hardly even notice anymore. Then on Monday it was announced that the Trump administration and Congress had agreed to a $1.1 trillion spending bill that increases money for defense and other areas while not cutting much elsewhere. The bill does not affect Social Security and Medicare, the government’s biggest programs, which Trump has vowed not to cut.

This is happening within the context of a federal government that is expected this fiscal year to spend $4 trillion but only collect $3.4 trillion, leaving a $559 billion deficit ($1,731 per American) that is being added to the $20 trillion national debt ($62,000 per American).

Meanwhile, President Trump released the bare outlines for tax cuts that the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget guesstimates will reduce federal revenues by $5.5 trillion over the next decade. His administration promises the tax cuts will spur enough economic growth to pay for themselves, but history has shown that rosy scenario simply won’t happen. History has shown, however, that when a president calls for tax cuts, there’s a good chance taxes will be cut.

For comparison, the federal government’s deficit for 2017 is 14 percent of expected expenses, and nothing is being done to close the gap. In Arkansas, the $70 million shortfall – $23.33 per Arkansan – was 1.3 percent of the state budget, and Hutchinson filled it with nary a peep from the Legislature or the affected agencies.

So why can’t Uncle Sam do what Gov. Asa did? There are many reasons, but one of the biggest is the fact that the federal government doesn’t have effective structural controls like the Revenue Stabilization Act.

A national Revenue Stabilization Act is not the answer. Letting the president unilaterally make cuts would give him or her too much power and would be unconstitutional. One potential solution is an amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced budget, an idea that goes back to the Founding Fathers. Sometimes that idea gains some traction, but there always have been too many opponents who’ve stopped it without offering a better idea.

Even if it were to pass, the culture of Washington still would have to be changed. A balanced budget amendment could be bypassed like other parts of the Constitution are bypassed now.

On the other hand, a structure helps create a culture. Gov. Hutchinson acted so decisively and uncontroversially in 2017 in large part because the Revenue Stabilization Act, passed in 1945, has become ingrained in the way we do things here over the past 72 years.

Regardless, future generations of Arkansans can be thankful they someday won’t have to pay back that $23.33.

They can apply it to the $20 trillion.

Can work be added to Arkansas Works?

Cindy Gillespie is director of the Department of Human Services.

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

Next week, legislators will meet in special session to change the Arkansas Works program to encourage its recipients to work for their benefits and, eventually, no longer need them.

Changing the program will be reasonably easy. Changing the recipients will be much harder.

Arkansas Works, formerly known as the private option, uses federal Medicaid dollars to buy private insurance for 311,000 Arkansans with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $17,000 for an individual. The state pays 5 percent of the program’s cost this year and 10 percent by 2020. The federal government pays the rest.

It was created through the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, which expanded Medicaid. Many Republican-leaning states declined to participate. Arkansas instead obtained a waiver from the Obama administration allowing it to buy private insurance rather than simply enroll recipients in Medicaid.

It has allowed Arkansas to be a national leader in reducing its uninsured population. But it is a government program that has grown bigger than expected, which happens a lot.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who wasn’t governor when it was created, wants to keep it but shrink it, so he is asking the Trump administration to change the waiver to reduce the maximum income from 138 percent of the federal poverty level to 100 percent, or about $12,000. That will reduce the rolls by 62,000 to about 249,000. Meanwhile, his administration wants to require some beneficiaries to work at least 20 hours a week, train for a job or volunteer. Those changes require legislators to amend some state laws, which they’ll do next week.

Creating those policies is the easy part. The Legislature is expected to approve the changes quickly. The state has been talking to the Trump administration and expects to be approved. The 62,000 Arkansans bumped from Arkansas Works can buy the same insurance they have now with a federal government subsidy. Their contribution will be $13 to $19 a month, about what they are supposed to pay now, though 75 percent of them don’t because the state can’t enforce the rule. Department of Human Services (DHS) officials think most will pay next year when insurance companies can remove their coverage.

The work requirement? Let’s keep our expectations reasonable.

In a briefing with reporters Wednesday, DHS Director Cindy Gillespie said it won’t affect 161,000 of the remaining 249,000 Arkansas Works recipients. They won’t have to work because they are age 50 or above, are “medically frail,” have a minor living at home, etc. Those exemptions mirror the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, which also serves many Arkansas Works recipients. Some of the remaining 88,000 won’t have to work either if they are students, pregnant or caring for an incapacitated person.

Most of the 88,000 are not working now. More than three-fourths have zero income. Moreover, less than two-thirds of the 62,000 with incomes between 100-138 percent, the ones who will move into private insurance, have jobs. The rest subsist on government benefits and other means.

Most recipients have not taken advantage of a big opportunity they have now. Under Arkansas Works’ current waiver granted by the Obama administration, recipients are referred to the Department of Workforce Services, which can help them get jobs. But of the more than 37,000 individuals referred to DWS in January, only 628 accessed the services or reported a new job after the referral while 703 had done so beforehand.

Changing Arkansas Works will help some people. Given access to health care and an incentive to work, they’ll begin pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

But some will not. Regardless of whatever liberal or conservative social engineering the state attempts, some people will not be self-sufficient because of lack of skill or will, addictions or very difficult personal circumstances. And then some people will simply choose to work the system and get by.

When they arrive sick and injured at the hospital doors, society must figure out what to do with them. One option: If they can’t pay, turn them away. Another option is the pre-Affordable Care Act method of letting them use the emergency room for free and then hospitals eating the costs or shifting them to the rest of us invisibly so we can pretend they don’t exist.

The state is opting for door number three: Try to provide enough but not too much, and try to get as many off the program as possible, for their own good and the taxpayers’.

Got a better idea? Call your legislators. They meet next week.

The death penalty: At least change it

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

Arkansas’ attempt to execute eight inmates in 11 days has led to a lot of discussion about whether the death penalty should continue to exist, and that discussion should continue. But given that polls show a strong majority of Arkansans support it and the governor is ready to enforce it, the more immediate discussion should be about how to administer it far better than it is has this month.

As you and a lot of people in the United States and the world know, Arkansas’ plan would have set a recent record for most executions in the least amount of time. This was done because the inmates had reached an end point in the appeals process at the same time the state’s supply of one of its three death penalty drugs, midazolam, was about to expire at the end of April. The drugs are hard to obtain because the manufacturers didn’t make them to be used in executions and don’t want to sell them for that purpose, in part because it gets them in trouble with the European Union, a much more important client than Arkansas.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a lawyer by training, knew the schedule would result in a flurry of lawsuits and disruptions and that probably not all eight executions would be carried out. (Three have happened and a fourth looks likely, but the rest probably won’t occur before the end of April.) He knew this would be a difficult time for everyone concerned, including his own administration, whose attention this has dominated. But the need to complete the process before April 30 apparently overshadowed how it would affect the state’s brand, which is surprising, because his concern for that brand was the main reason legislators never even seriously considered a transgender bathroom bill during the past three months.

Worldwide, the story is not that Arkansas is executing eight people. The story is the rapid pace, and reason for it. At the moment, many outsiders would fill in the blank in the following sentence “Arkansas is _____,” with “the state that planned to execute eight people in 11 days because one of its drugs was about to go bad.” Regardless of what you believe about the death penalty, if that’s the first thing that pops into an outsider’s head, it’s not good for business.

Also not good for business are the unprofessional methods Arkansas has used to obtain its three-drug cocktail: the sedative midazolam; vecuronium bromide, which stops a person’s breathing; and the heart-stopping potassium chloride. As reported by the Associated Press, the Department of Correction director obtained potassium chloride against the wishes of the manufacturer by meeting in an undisclosed location with a distributor who “donated” it rather than sell it. Moreover, the manufacturer of vecuronium bromide sued the state saying it had been misled about how the drug would be used, though a Department of Correction deputy director said he did give that information to a company salesman.

The lack of straightforwardness by one party in these transactions – Arkansas – is possible because a state law keeps anonymous the identities of drug manufacturers and suppliers, which is looking more and more like a bad idea. The rule of thumb should be, open government is better than a secretive one, lest agency directors sneak around the corner to obtain drugs from undisclosed suppliers.

Governments have been executing people for eons using a variety of methods, from hangings to guillotines to feeding them to lions. Despite there being thousands of ways to kill a person, Arkansas state law very specifically requires using either a barbiturate or that three-drug cocktail, all of which are difficult to obtain, or if lethal injection is invalidated by a court, the electric chair.

Legislators met for three months this year, but the state’s execution processes where hardly discussed despite the gathering storm. They will meet three more days in a special session May 1-3, but there’s no talk about changing the processes then, either.

Regardless of what one believes about the death penalty, we can all agree that this has been a roller coaster ride for everyone, and not a fun one. Much of that is because of an American legal system that Arkansas can’t change, but it can change its own laws and administrative processes. It should do what it can as soon as it can. There are still 30 inmates on Death Row, with more to be added later.

After legislators meet, marijuana more limited but still legal

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

It was a good legislative session for some (gun rights supporters), a bad one for others (supporters of more highway spending), and for supporters of medical marijuana, it was as good as could be expected.

The amendment passed by Arkansas voters in November could be amended with a two-thirds vote by legislators, and at least that percentage likely voted against it, as did Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. There were ample opportunities these past three months for those lawmakers to mostly overturn the amendment overtly or subversively. But the attitude among many legislators and the governor was that regardless of what they believed about the amendment, the people voted for it, so their democratic duty was to make it work.

An early test was House Bill 1058 by Rep. Doug House, R-North Little Rock, which changed a provision in the amendment requiring doctors to certify that the potential benefits of medical marijuana likely would outweigh the risks for a patient. Doctors, Rep. House argued, would be reluctant to make that claim because there are no accepted medical standards for marijuana, which remains an illegal drug in the eyes of the federal government, and they could face liability issues. The bill allowed doctors instead to simply state the patient suffered from one of the qualifying medical conditions spelled out in the amendment. In other words, they were identifying an illness, which they would do anyway.

If the spread of medical marijuana were to be limited, here was the perfect place to do it. The Legislature could simply leave the amendment exactly as the voters had approved it, and many doctors wouldn’t prescribe it. You could see the wheels turning as legislators considered that possibility. It passed the House with 70 votes, three to spare, on Jan. 17, and then passed the Senate with 24 votes, none to spare, on Jan. 23. The governor signed the bill into law as Act 5 four days later.

Efforts that would have significantly limited the drug failed to advance. Senate Bill 238 by Sen. Jason Rapert, R-Conway, would have delayed the legalization of medical marijuana in Arkansas until it is legal in the United States. It didn’t even get a motion in committee. Senate Bill 357 by Rapert would have prohibited the smoking of marijuana anywhere in Arkansas. It failed twice in the Senate. House and Senate bills that would have made it illegal to sell edible marijuana products each failed in their respective chambers.

Legislators in all passed two dozen medical marijuana bills, and some did limit its use or add to its price and thus make it less accessible. Act 1098 by Rep. House adds a 4 percent tax for cultivation facilities, dispensaries, and other medical marijuana businesses. The tax will pay for regulating the drug but will raise the price for consumers at least 8 percent. Other laws prohibit smoking marijuana where tobacco smoking is prohibited, ban products that could appeal to children, allow schools to prevent marijuana-impaired students from attending school, and ban the possession of marijuana by military personnel or their caregivers and on military sites. Act 593 by Rep. Carlton Wing, R-North Little Rock, includes a range of legal protections for employers if they take action against employees who are impaired while on the job or if they exclude employees from safety-sensitive positions.

Even with those changes, lawmakers did not fundamentally alter the fact that marijuana soon will be available in Arkansas, legally, for qualifying patients. The market merely awaits the bureaucratic process and the establishment of businesses. The first licenses for growers and dispensaries could be issued by the end of September, and then there has to be time to grow the plants, build the facilities, and open the doors to patient-customers.

Of course, there is the matter of marijuana still being illegal for any purpose under federal law, which covers every square inch of the country, including Arkansas. All of this is happening because the Obama administration looked the other way, Congress tacitly approved, and the Trump administration so far is following suit.

This would be a lot less weird if federal law were either changed or enforced. Seeing how neither apparently is going to happen, expect to see medical marijuana – legal in Arkansas, technically illegal in America – available for purchase around January.

Uncivil discourse

Sen. Tom Cotton, center, and Rep. French Hill at the town hall.

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

There’s regular intelligence, and there’s emotional intelligence, which is the ability to recognize and control your own emotions and to influence the emotions of others. If you’re a member of Congress, you need both, but if you’re a member of Congress participating in a town hall, and you can only be blessed with one, it’d better be emotional intelligence.

I write that paragraph after attending Monday’s 2 p.m. raucous town hall hosted by Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. French Hill, where it didn’t matter what kind of intellectual arguments they made because they weren’t going to change many minds among the 750 attendees – some of whom totally supported them and many of whom were totally opposed. All that mattered was that they kept their cool amongst the booing, jeering, shouted interruptions and personal attacks, and they did.

This is one odd way we do political discourse these days. A Republican congressman – just as Democrats did in 2009 – hosts a town hall for some reason. Advocates alert the like-minded to converge and attack. The member of Congress stands on a stage before a mostly hostile room where audience members take their turns asking questions – most pointed, some insulting, and some better than the ones asked by journalists. Many in the audience cheer. The member of Congress answers – sometimes well, sometimes lamely. Many boo regardless.

That was the case Monday. When Hill said Congress must repeal Obamacare, the crowd reacted with a mixture of loud boos and cheers. Asked if Congress would subpoena President Trump’s tax returns, Cotton said Trump is still being audited, that he has completed a statement of financial interest, and that everyone knows where he does business because he attaches his name to his buildings. Few were convinced. At one point, some audience members chanted, “Lock him up” regarding Trump, an echo of the “Lock her up” chant in the 2016 campaign that Republican politicians unfortunately did little to tame.

The frustration expressed by many in the audience is explainable. All of us have a vision for how this country should look, but, in a democracy of 300 million people, none of us will get our way. Average Americans of all persuasions feel silenced in comparison to big money donors. The system is beset by partisan bickering and is unable to solve problems, even when compromise should be possible. Elected officials inflame the uncivil climate with their own rhetoric. If a politician uses the word “liberal” as an insult, then it should not be surprising that his liberal constituents feel insulted.

Town halls can be useful. They let members of a political minority express themselves in solidarity with kindred spirits. They remind elected officials, who tend to focus on their base of supporters, that some of their constituents feel intensely differently. At their best, they may even expose a member of Congress to new information. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the town halls, but Cotton’s rhetoric on health care has become more balanced after years of his merely criticizing Obamacare. Certainly, I would rather live in a country where average citizens loudly express their disapproval with the authorities than one where such behavior is not tolerated.

But we’ve all learned certain rules for dealing with other people, and those rules shouldn’t change in a town hall setting. Interrupting, shouting insults, putting people on the defensive, speaking without listening – these are not the most effective communication tools. Elected officials, especially polarizing ones like Cotton, know some of their constituents disagree with them, but for every person jeering at them in a town hall, there are hundreds at home or work whose votes cancel theirs out. Some make the calculation that it’s worth being yelled at for an hour or two in order to look like they’re representing everyone. Playing the martyr may even form the basis for a fundraising letter somewhere down the road.

If I were to design these meetings, I’d keep the disagreement and some of the passion, but I’d add a lot more civility to the discourse. I’d have less yelling and jeering, and more shows of hand – importantly, with the expectation that they might actually affect a congressman’s thinking. And I’d have more town halls, period, at accessible times of day.

But then, while all of us have a vision for how this country should look, none of us will get our way. I’ll try to keep my cool about it.