Boozman running for re-elect ‘if you had to ask me today.’ And Hutchinson?

By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Sen. John Boozman is 68 years old, which is still relatively young, but he’s had some past health issues and is entirely too nice to be in Washington these days. When I asked him Saturday if he plans to run for re-election in 2022, I figured he’d give me a standard non-answer to avoid saying he probably isn’t.

Instead, he said this: “If you had to ask me today, I’ve got to talk to my family and all of those kind of things, I’d say yes. … But that’s a long time. It’s not really two years. It’s like three-and-a-half years.”

My assumption was wrong. Not the first time, and not the last, and that’s just for this column.

Good Roads Foundation

Gov. Asa Hutchinson will be term-limited out of office in 2022. Then what?

Meanwhile, by 2022, Gov. Asa Hutchinson will be term-limited out of office. He’s a week older than Boozman, as both were born in December 1950, but he’s had no health issues and plays basketball pretty vigorously for a man pushing 70. Asked in March by journalist Roby Brock if he will be finished with politics when his term ends, he replied, “Wouldn’t count me out.”

So if Hutchinson isn’t “out,” where would he try to get in? There’s no place in state government after being governor. He could return to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served three terms. But being one of 435 representatives would not be a promotion after being one of 50 governors, particularly if Republicans are still in the minority there. Plus, he’d have to unseat an incumbent, presumably Rep. Steve Womack in the Third District, assuming Womack still wants to keep the seat in 2022. Continue reading →

Democrats looking for candidates, and have found some

Democrats, Alabama, blue wave, school boards, Hixson, Breanne, red tide, judicial electionsBy Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

For elections to be competitive in Arkansas next year, the minority party must field candidates, and Democrats say they have some, or at least are trying hard to find them.

The party already has a U.S. Senate candidate, Josh Mahony, who was scheduled to kick off his campaign in El Dorado, Fayetteville and Little Rock this Thursday-Saturday. He’s trying to unseat U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, who was kicking off his own campaign at Republican Party headquarters Saturday.

Mahony won only 32.6% running for the 3rd District congressional seat last year against U.S. Rep. Steve Womack. He faces an uphill battle against Cotton.

Actually, he’s scaling a cliff. Cotton is an incumbent Republican and a national figure who can raise whatever money he needs, plus a lot more. Continue reading →

Don’t tell them what comes after trillion

tax, taxes, debt, deficits, spending, trillion, State of the Union, deficit hawks, balanced budget amendment, Jonathan Bydlak, immigration, $98.8 trillion, $970 billionBy Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

While the nation’s attention was divided between President Trump’s back-and-forth with Democratic congresswomen and Robert Mueller’s upcoming testimony, negotiators this week crafted a deal that may “end up being the worst budget agreement in our nation’s history.”

That description came from Maya McGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The agreement was reached by President Trump’s Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and it was announced by an enthusiastic Trump tweet.

The deal suspends the federal debt ceiling until July 31, 2021 – after next year’s election. Suspending the ceiling wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing under other circumstances; frankly, we probably need to ditch it permanently. It accomplishes no purpose other than creating periodic crises that rattle financial markets and make the United States look like it can’t get its act together.

The problem is the deal eliminates spending limits created in 2011 that actually did slow the national debt’s growth a little. Since those will be gone, we’ll spend an additional $320 billion over the next two years on both defense and non-defense expenditures – paid for by borrowing, as always. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says the deal could add as much as $1.7 trillion to the national debt over a decade. Continue reading →

Opioids and those down-ballot coroners

By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

In Arkansas, 434 people died of a drug overdose in 2018. The year before, 429 died, and 188 of those involved opioids.

Well, about that many. All of those probably should be higher. The Centers for Disease Control and other government agencies don’t have great numbers because they aren’t reported uniformly and aren’t compiled in a timely manner.

Moreover, Arkansas’ numbers often depend on the judgments of 75 county coroners, all but two of them elected, whose only qualifications are that they be 18, registered to vote, residents of their counties, and not felons. Training is offered and encouraged, but they are not required to complete it because they are constitutional officers. (However, under a law passed this year, training is required for their deputies, if they have them.)

Also, sometimes families ask coroners to assign an opioid death’s cause to, say, a heart attack, which sounds better and technically is correct but doesn’t tell the whole story. Continue reading →

He’s ‘gonna tweet what he’s gonna tweet’

By Steve Brawner

© 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

For Arkansas’ all-Republican elected leadership, President Trump sometimes makes things … complicated.

Such was the case this week, when Trump dominated the news cycle – and I mean dominated – by tweeting that several Democratic congresswomen should “go back” to their home countries. He didn’t specify them by name, but he clearly was referring to all or some of a group that includes four outspoken progressives, all minorities. In a press conference Monday, he reiterated they are “free to leave if they want.”

The “go back to where you came from” tweets sparked immediate outrage from Democrats. Republican officeholders, meanwhile, met them with initial silence, which is how they prefer to respond to these kinds of tweets. These, however, were harder to ignore.

Among Arkansas’ elected officials, Rep. Steve Womack tweeted that the remarks were “not defensible” and then criticized the “anti-American, anti-Semitic and extreme policies espoused by the socialist wing of the Democratic majority.” Ironically, in the next sentence he called for changing the tone. Rep. Bruce Westerman criticized the “new socialist Democrats” but called the president’s remarks “unnecessarily demeaning.” Rep. French Hill said he was “tired of the war of outrageous and ill-informed comments – from our president and other elected officials.” As reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Sen. John Boozman said that “singling out people whose opinions differ from our own is bad for discourse and public civility.” Continue reading →