If a legislator doesn’t have to pay all his taxes, then why should we?

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

In light of what’s been happening lately at the State Capitol, average citizens might be asking a simple question: If a legislator doesn’t have to pay all of his taxes, then why should we?

I’m referring to the case of Rep. Mickey Gates, R-Hot Springs, who is still in office despite pleading no contest July 29 to charges of failing to pay his taxes in 2012. Gates must now pay the state $74,789 for money owed from 2012-14, and a hearing will determine what he owes for 2015-17 . As part of his plea agreement, prosecutors dropped additional charges related to his failure to file tax returns from 2013-17.

That six-year period is bad enough, but his record of tax evasion actually is much longer. Authorities have said he owed the state almost $260,000 in taxes, interest and penalties after not filing a return from 2003-17. But he was not charged for those earlier years because the statute of limitations had run out.

Even after his no contest plea, he is refusing to resign, despite calls for him to do so by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Speaker of the House Matthew Shepherd and others.

Hutchinson said that if Gates won’t resign, he should be removed from office, which can happen under the Arkansas Constitution with a two-thirds vote of the House of Representatives.

However, the Legislature likely will not meet again until next year. Hutchinson could call it into special session to expel Gates, but his spokesman told me he has no plans to do so. Continue reading →

Cotton vs. Mahony: One had Chick-fil-A

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

If you had no other metric by which to measure Arkansas’ U.S. Senate race, this one might tell you something: One campaign had enough money to cater its kickoff event with Chick-fil-A.

That would be the campaign of U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, the Republican incumbent in an increasingly Republican state.

Cotton has $3.5 million cash on hand, according to the Federal Election Commission. That’s more than enough to feed the hundreds at his campaign kickoff at the Republican Party of Arkansas’ headquarters Saturday.

There, Cotton signaled his campaign themes, as if there were any doubt about what those would be: national security, his natural passion, along with appointing conservative judges, the economy, cutting government, immigration, border security and trade.

Those last three are issues President Trump has brought to the forefront. Republican candidates cannot ignore them; Cotton has fully embraced them. Continue reading →

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 →