Can Steve Womack bring balance to the Budget Committee?

Steve WomackUncle Sam is now $20.5 trillion in debt, or about $62,700 for every American man, woman and child. This year, Arkansas’ congressmen, particularly Rep. Steve Womack, have an outsized influence regarding how quickly that debt grows.

Let’s play a little Q and A to explain why.

Q. What’s the latest?

A. The news this week is that Rep. Steve Womack, who represents Northwest Arkansas’ 3rd District, now chairs the House Budget Committee. That means, theoretically at least, he’ll play a leading role in creating the framework for how the government collects and spends your money. Continue reading →

Hutchinson sounds like he’s OK with medical marijuana, but when will Congress act?

Gov. Asa Hutcinson, medical marijuanaIs Governor Asa Hutchinson OK with medical marijuana? Sure sounds like he’s getting there.

In a meeting with reporters in his office Jan. 4, Hutchinson was asked to react to that day’s big announcement by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions had said the Department of Justice will take less of a hands-off approach to marijuana, which is still illegal nationally, than it did under President Obama. Local federal prosecutors will decide who gets charged.

Hutchinson said Arkansas will be watching to see what the Justice Department does next.

“There needs to be a difference of view between medical marijuana and recreational use of marijuana,” he said. He said Sessions “should” follow the lead of President Trump, who “has recognized medical marijuana as an appropriate exception to federal enforcement policy, but he has not said the same thing about recreational use. I do not want Arkansas to become a recreational use state. People passed medical marijuana. They did not adopt recreational use, and I do not believe they would.” Continue reading →

A holiday for only a King

Martin Luther King, Joyce ElliottBy Steve Brawner

© 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Visitors to the Arkansas Capitol this January 15 won’t see a sign saying the building will be closed to honor Dr. Martin Luther King and Gen. Robert E. Lee.

This year, the holiday will be King’s alone.

Legislators voted last year to separate the days. The third Monday in January will be Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Robert E. Lee will be acknowledged on the second Saturday in October with a “state memorial day,” not a holiday. The law also requires schools to develop teaching materials about the Civil War and the civil rights struggle.

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Hopes for a new year

By Steve Brawner

© 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Christmas is over, so it’s too late to make a wish list. But now arrives the new year, a time of hope and renewal. So here are my hopes for some of Arkansas’ leading public figures.

– Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the Legislature. I hope the upcoming fiscal session, which starts in February, is brief and boring, as it’s generally supposed to be.

– U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford. I hope eastern Arkansas’ congressman sees success with his continuing efforts to open up Cuban markets to Arkansas products. Doing so also opens up that country to democratic and free market ideas.

– U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman. I hope the Senate passes his Resilient Federal Forests Act. The California wildfires have demonstrated that current federal policies are not protecting our forests. Westerman, Congress’ only forester, has tried for several years to pass a fix. The House approved the bill Nov. 1. Continue reading →

Wanted: an open golden door

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” – “The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus, at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

Christmas has passed and a new year is beginning, which means that nearly 800,000 young people have spent the holidays not knowing if they’re subject to being deported in a few months. Meanwhile, almost a year after President Trump took office, little progress has been made on his promised wall.

The Founding Fathers created a Constitution that depends on compromise and common sense to address problems imperfectly but nondictatorially. Lately it hasn’t worked very well, but these two immigration issues should be fairly doable.

Continue reading →