Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.

And hello again, everyone, and thanks very much for being with us.

How stringent should Arkansas's initiative and referendum process be?

Has the state gone too far in regulating the way in which citizens can propose laws and constitutional amendments?

Or was the system ripe for abuse?

In a moment, the secretary of state, a defendant in a lawsuit challenging the new codes.

But first, the first 100 days of Donald Trump's second administration and what's to come in the several hundred days that follow?

What's the impact on Arkansas?

Well, we're joined by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Washington correspondent Alex Thomas.

Alex, thanks for coming aboard, as always.

You've had an interesting 100 days yourself.

Yes.

Thank you so much for having me, first of all.

And this has been a very interesting 100 days, to put it mildly.

A lot going on up up here on the Hill, a lot being discussed and a lot of questions remain as people are still getting their feet wet here on Capitol Hill.

Well, our six have had their feet wet for quite a while now.

But but it all comes down to almost always it comes down to money.

And that's the bit right now.

And anyway, that's the big story in one permutation or another.

So let's start with that big, beautiful bill that the administration wants.

Where does it stand?

That's right.

So you're talking about reconciliation as the president's, but one big beautiful bill combining not just spending cuts, but also Republicans goals of extending the 2017 tax cuts.

So right now, we are making progress on that in the House of Representatives.

On Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee led by Representative Perenchio, they approved their portion.

That is $1 billion less in the deficit.

And next week, this coming week, we're going to have two big committees we're watching because the Arkansans that serve on those committees, the first House Natural Resources, led by Representative Bruce Westerman.

They're also targeting $1 billion.

And with the House Agriculture Committee, which is targeting $230 billion over the next ten years.

That would be Representative Rick Crawford, who was a member on that committee.

He's not Chairman, but he does chair committee being the House Intel Committee.

Yeah.

Part of the problem here is that the the House version of the House's goal anyway is rather more aggressive than the Senate.

So we're looking at a big stalemate here, a standoff, or are we?

Well, that is a good point here, Steve, to really give our audience an understanding here of how big the gap is in the house.

They're shooting for $1.5 trillion in deficit reductions in the Senate.

They're shooting for 4 billion with a B, You don't have to go to any calculus class to understand there's a big gap there.

And the Senate hasn't been prone to spending cuts as their friends over on the House of Representatives.

So this is going to be an interesting challenge once the House completes their portion and the Senate completes their portion, How do you bridge that gap, not just to find some middle ground, but also win over some Republicans who may be sitting on the fence with the idea of the House making some more bigger cuts than they would really prefer?

Well, a majority of the majorities in both chambers, Republicans in control of both chambers, albeit fairly narrowly in the House.

But are these goals realistic at all when everybody, it seems in both conferences, is behind the an extension of the 2017 tax cuts that becomes the hard part with all this is how do you combine everything together?

So if you just put out an extension of the 2017 tax cuts, you would have some people go, Oh heck yeah, we're going to do that.

We're going to make sure this is done.

And they could pass that with the Republican majorities that they have.

But then you start coupling things like possible spending reductions affecting Medicaid, spending reductions, affecting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as food stamps.

That becomes the headaches in this process because there are some people who will look at those spending reductions and go, well, wait a minute, my constituents benefit from those programs.

Those are programs that are deeply rooted in my district.

I can't afford to hurt my constituents in that way.

That becomes the problem in this process.

Now, keep in mind, we don't want to do another C.R.

until September.

That's something that gets brought up a lot.

Will the government have a shutdown?

We don't have to worry about that until the fall.

But at the same time, with the way Congress works up here, there's always that fear in the back of your head about, okay, there's a lot of timetables here.

Can we actually get things done in a timely manner?

Well, let's start with a problem, as you mentioned, of two programs in which virtually every member, I would imagine on both sides of the Capitol have a stake.

And that's well, let's start with Medicaid, because I can tell you everyone connected with clinical care from from pharmacists to nurses to MDs, surgeons have are on the edge of their seat regarding Medicaid.

How can you accomplish these cuts, these deficit reductions, without getting into Medicaid?

That would seem to be a crucial question up there, right?

That's something I asked Representative Steve Womack about before the Easter break.

And he straight up told me that the committee that has jurisdiction over Medicaid, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, they're responsible for looking at $880 billion in spending reductions.

And again, that's over a ten year period.

But you cannot go and implement $880 billion in deficit reductions without looking at Medicaid.

And that's going to be something that a lot of people are not willing to really chase down.

They don't want to hurt their constituents.

They understand how important it is for their constituents in their states to have Medicaid and Medicaid expansion, especially in a state like Arkansas.

And they don't want to risk hurting their constituents as a result.

So how do you navigate that to not only protect the people who are most vulnerable, but also find some spending reductions?

That's a big challenge for the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

And there hasn't been a big sign that says they're going to go in this direction and it's all going to be hunky dory.

Easy peasy.

It's going to be a big headache for them trying to figure out how to make the math work.

Well, I mean, does the math even work?

The math?

Yeah, that's the fun part, is trying to figure out a formula that makes it work.

Yeah, it's it's going to be very difficult for them to figure that out.

We don't have any Arkansans to serve on that committee, so not going to be directly involved.

But when that big, beautiful bill hits their desk, whenever they finalize it, they're going to have to make a choice.

Is it going to be we're going to cut it by this amount and we're going to help our constituents?

Or are we going to cut by this amount?

It's going to hurt our constituents.

That's something we don't know because we don't have final text yet.

At the same time, they're going to have to sit there and evaluate the numbers and figure out what's best for Arkansans.

Well, and in terms of that big, beautiful building, extending the tax cuts, I assume all six Arkansans up there are still in favor of of extending the 17 cuts.

But CBO estimates that, what, a $4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.

Yeah, the math isn't really mapping on that.

And I've asked some people to explain, can you do all this at one time?

Can you extend the tax cuts?

Can you cut spending and can you have it all work out?

Like you said, everyone seems to be on board with the tax cuts.

And I asked Senator Cotton about that directly with combining all of this together.

I asked him because just are we fighting off more than we can chew at one point?

And he said he doesn't think that's the case.

He thinks that Congress can get this done, can do something in a responsible manner and have something on the president's desk later this year.

I don't think they're going to do that by Memorial Day.

The reference be talked about earlier.

At the same time, there is some hope and some optimism that congressional Republicans can get this done.

But as you've seen over these last 100 days and even in the last Congress, it's a bit of a battle of egos up here and a battle of numbers trying to get everybody to get on the same board, even the vote earlier this month or earlier in April, just trying to get the budget blueprint through the Senate and House.

I mean, it almost didn't get through the House.

They almost had to start back to square one.

So it's going to take a lot of discussions and a lot of people pleasing to get something like this done.

Yeah, well, and you mentioned the other program that so many members, if not all, have a have a stake in, and that's the SNAP program, the food stamp program, which is, of course leads us to a segue way to the farm bill.

Any movement there?

We have not seen any significant movement at this time.

Of course, with that food stamp portion that's more than likely going to affect how farm bill discussions go out.

So when we talk about the farm bill and we have talked about before on this program, Steve, the farm bill isn't really a farm bill.

Yes, it does fund agriculture programs, but 80% of that farm bill goes to nutrition programs and especially SNAP.

So whatever the House and Senate Agriculture Committees do with SNAP as they go through, reconciliation is more than likely going to affect what happens with those farm bill discussions last year when they try to pass the farm bill.

The easy parts were the other 20%.

For the most part, everyone agreed on what to do.

They understood the needs that farmers are facing, they're willing to discuss and negotiate and find common ground on those issues.

The problem was that nutrition title and the conservation program title, and those were just two different positions that they just weren't able to find common ground on.

And that's why we're still operating under a farm bill from 2010.

Got.

Chairman Bozeman of Arkansas on the Senate ag side.

Anyway, have you have you been able to speak with him about it?

And is there any moving this ball while we're so absorbed with that big, beautiful bill?

Right.

So he and I talked about the reconciliation portion of it as it relates to the farm bill, and he's optimistic that whatever goes on in reconciliation isn't going to have too much of an impact on the farm bill.

And his view of this is the Senate and House members have already done their homework.

They went across the country to talk to people.

They've talked to each other over the past two years so they know what needs to get done.

It's just actually getting it done.

Bozeman is the intern, the eternal optimist, and that's a good thing to have a beer, especially in a town where it's easy to get pessimistic, it's easy to be down.

So Bozeman is really hopeful that they can get this done.

Everybody understands the need to get it done.

It's just well, actually getting it done.

That's the problem.

Are and you've written about this, you've covered this.

The debated it was particularly in committee some proposed significant cuts to the Consumer protection Financial bureau.

Right.

So that has been one of the early targets of the new Trump administration is the CFP.

And what the House Financial Services Committee has done through their portion of the reconciliation package is cap the budget going from one amount down to 70% of that amount.

So you're talking about 30% of what it is currently.

Democrats do not like that.

This was a bureau that was founded after the Great Recession of 2008.

They see this program.

They see this agency as vital in ensuring that agencies are private sector businesses, are responsible to their customers, and that we don't end up in a similar situation again.

But when you only have a 30% budget of what you are originally supposed to have, I mean, that changes how an agency operates.

Conservatives have not been a fan of the CFPB.

They think that that agency has just overreached its authority, and so they're not too opposed to restricting what the CFPB can do.

But they're Democratic colleagues.

Definitely not.

Fancy idea.

Yeah, and let's go to let's go to foreign affairs or national security, if we can, because to our heart, we have two Arkansans are chairing the House and Senate Intel committees.

And there seems to be a great deal of confusion in the national security arena about where the administration is headed.

And so, like you said, the fact that we have Tom Cotton on the Senate side and Rick Crawford on the House side is very unique to Arkansas.

I mean, you're talking about two guys from a state with different backgrounds but at the same time can share dialog if we build a relationship and they work well together.

But like you mentioned, there are some national security concerns regarding the United States and how it funds its operations overseas, things like what we talk or what we would call soft power.

So things like USAID and things of that nature.

During the two week recess a few weeks ago, Representative Crawford actually went to the Caribbean and to some of these smaller countries to understand China's influence in the Western Hemisphere.

That's been a big focus of his.

And he really wants to build those bridges with those countries, really put the United States have a presence in those countries to really not just make the United States a major player in the region, but also keep China at bay and make sure the Chinese don't have a way to have influence on the United States and its neighbors.

With Senator Cotton, rather, he's definitely been more supportive of the president than a lot of other people were.

That's just Senator Cotton's nature.

At the same time, though, he's been very supportive of the president, which is not surprising.

He's been an ally of the president going back to his first administration eight years ago.

So right now we're looking at our guys and they're on the same path.

They're talking to each other, but being at different committees, obviously handling things a little bit different.

Yeah.

What's the feedback been from the we have the SecDef under the Secretary of Defense and his use of social media or whatever, and then they're in the as we prepare this broadcast, there's word that Mr. Trump is about to dismiss his national security adviser and maybe the number two in that department.

It's a little unsettling.

It is, but they have been very supportive of the Trump administration and people in that administration as well.

They haven't pushed back nearly as much as Democratic colleagues have.

In fact, I think the word pushback may be a bit too much to even say they've been very supportive.

Trump Very supportive of this administration and really downplaying some of the concerns that the Democratic colleagues have stated, especially regarding the single app controversy a few weeks ago.

Is there much room, given the current climate, Alex, up there for individual members to pursue district specific matters in terms of legislation with this budget debate, the national security thing, China is the overriding concern.

It would appear to be on a national security and you have Ukraine on top of all that.

Whether you can find time to make things work, which I hate to say that lawmakers up here can create a 25th hour some days, but some days they manage to do that.

Yeah, When we talk about people who come up to DC and how you get legislation passed, I mean, there's been a lot of push on trying to make sure that Arkansans have the right kind of resources.

Representative Phil's still adamant about extending flat side in central Arkansas when it comes to some legislation that we've seen from our guys.

They look really hyper specific, but that's because they're Arkansas lawmakers first and foremost.

Yeah, they're committee chairs.

Yes, they are building national profiles.

If you're Senator Cotton, you have a national profile.

But at the same time, they're Arkansans first and foremost.

So that's been the real priority for them.

And that's what we're still going to see in the coming weeks and months of this Congress and this administration.

Well, of course, one of Mr. Hill's paramount concerns is but he's been very active on the crypto front and in steering legislation involving that is he so is his House committee has passed the stable act.

They have passed that which would give some regulatory overview of what we call stablecoins, which are a type of digital asset.

Yeah, and they really have a good partnership with what's going on over on the Senate side with Tim Scott, who leads the relevant committee over there.

But the weird wrinkle in all of this, Steve, is that they also have to rope in the Senate and House committees because they have jurisdiction over commodities, including digital ones.

So Senator Bozeman is involved in this issue.

G.T.

Thompson of Pennsylvania is involved in this issue.

And so not only do you have to Arkansans on Intel, like we talked about earlier, you have to Arkansans playing a significant role on the crypto currency digital asset front.

And I just don't think there's a state up here that has that kind of influence as a whole, that alone on cryptocurrency.

And it's going to be interesting seeing what they can do in both the Senate and House.

They have some good conversations.

They're working on legislation together.

It's just finalizing text and really making sure I's are dotted, T's are crossed, and getting legislation sent to the White House.

Yeah, and let's see if we can squeeze this in.

Arkansas has now to Mr.

Ambassadors.

But there was a little opposition on the Senate confirmation side.

What what's behind that?

Right.

So Mike Huckabee is now the ambassador to Israel.

His opposition stemmed from comments he made regarding Palestine.

Unsurprisingly, being the staunch supporter of Israel that he is Ambassador.

Huckabee has said some things regarding the two state solution.

He's not a supporter of that.

And when he was pressed on those issues by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he put his hands up and said, look, those were positions that I have, but that's not going to be how I handle this job.

That's going to be something I put behind me.

I'm going to go to Israel, go to Jerusalem and represent the views of the Trump administration.

You only got one Democratic vote.

That being if John Fetterman to Pennsylvania, who is a staunch supporter of Israel and its efforts to combat Hamas when it comes to Warren Stephens, who is now the ambassador to the UK, he faced some pushback because of something that was out of his control.

So Mark BURNETT, who's a television producer, he's the guy behind The Apprentice.

He serves in a special envoy role in the UK.

And one of the concerns that Democrats had was that with that special envoy role and an ambassador over there, will there be confusion?

Who's going to be representing the United States over there?

Who's going to be making the phone calls and even though he did get six votes from Democrats at the same time, Warren Stephens faced some opposition as a result of that confusion.

Got to end it there, Alex, because we're simply out of time.

As always, we thank you for yours.

Yes, sir.

Thanks, Steve.

All right.

And we'll be right back.

And we are back.

Colchester served as Governor Sanders legal aid until January, when he accepted her appointment as interim Arkansas secretary of state.

His predecessor resigned the position to become state treasurer in his current role.

He is a defendant, as is the state in a lawsuit challenging a package of new laws that he, among others argue is necessary to protect ballot integrity and the initiative and referendum process.

The plaintiffs contend the statues are unnecessary and are in reality designed to suppress grassroots governance.

Secretary Cohen joins us now.

So Jester joins us now.

Mr. Jester, thanks very much for coming aboard.

Absolutely.

Thank you for having me.

Straight away to the arguments raised by by the plaintiffs.

This is anti-democratic and we'll take it from there.

Yes.

And I want to start out by saying I can't get into the details.

I have spent the past couple of years for Governor Sanders saying, you know, please, we can't get into the details of an active lawsuit.

But I will say, I think we can all find common ground here, that fraud in a process my office oversees is really unacceptable and that the two basic things that we should be looking for and I've said this a million times before, is this a person who signed, who is a real Arkansan?

And did they mean to sign what they were signing?

Did someone else sign their name for them?

There's so many things that could go wrong, and there's good evidence that things have gone wrong and they've gone wrong for many years.

And so I'm proud of the legislation we did.

And I think there's some things you don't want to get caught up fighting for, and there are some things that are worth fighting for.

And this is something that's worth fighting for.

What is the good evidence?

So every year we have thousands of duplicate signatures that are that are submitted of the same name in multiple times, sometimes in different handwriting.

We have something called transcription where one person you might see a page and half the signatures are all filled out in the exact same handwriting.

And while the names might look different, you'll see the same address over and over again.

And there's actually many other examples from testimonies, from calls.

But I don't want to say we have an exhaustive list and listed out to you because that's coming out in the lawsuit.

And from our own record evidence that we relied on.

So I trust the attorney general to do a fantastic job, and I'm looking forward to the suit.

Well, the secretary of state's office is entrusted with catching these.

They think then there would appear to be if if I'm reading the record correctly, very little felonious intent on the part of anyone who signed the petition.

I think we have to disagree.

I mean, think about it this way.

Your name, Anyone could sign your name on a petition and my office would never know and we would count it.

And we've never had the ability.

All they need to know is your address and your name.

And to me, that just really isn't enough.

That's why we need things like voter ID and among amongst many other things, really proud of the legislation.

It is constitutional.

It's really a wonderful thing for our election security.

The opponents argue also that this not the details, but the philosophy behind the lawsuit that the business community abhors the initiative and referendum process because issues that it traditionally opposes, for example, a minimum wage, if they make it to the ballot, they tend to pass.

What are my thoughts on that?

Yeah, that that that's ultimately, you know, the business community's interest in this in this package of legislation.

So they may have to protect their economic base on what they support or what they don't support.

I have one job here, and that's just to make sure that if you have the signatures through a valid process that really captures the will according to the laws passed by the General Assembly.

I don't care what it is, we're going to follow the law.

But if you're going to use fraud, then I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that.

And I think these new laws are going to keep out fraud.

And I'm just really, really thankful for them.

And I think the people of Arkansas, really, they all want if the people as established by the Constitution, want it on the ballot, we want to get it in there.

And if we don't, we don't want it to be on there when they don't have the actual support reflected by the signature prop process as properly done.

Next legislative session, you you will remain in this job for about a year and a half.

That's right.

Yes.

So the next legislative session, anyway, is the fiscal session, which is restricted ordinarily to, you know, budgetary matters.

But would you suggest to the governor that would you have a legislative package that you would offer the governor that she might include or that the General Assembly might vote to accept the fiscal the fiscal session, I really think should be about fiscal things.

And we have plenty on our plate that's going to come up with, you know, we have an appropriation.

Every single employee in our state government is appropriated for and I'm the steward of making sure that jobs that we've been assigned are done well.

And so that's my focus for a fiscal session is how our our houses, our appropriations structure to allow us to execute our responsibility as well.

Business and commercial services, elections, capital security, capital facilities.

That's what my focus is on.

And you are also the steward of the Capitol campus?

Yes, sir.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And there are a couple we have another yet another mind legislative legislatively approved monument for the unborn.

There is some talk about a memorial for a former governor.

Footsy Bret.

Lieutenant Governor footsie.

Bret.

Where does that stand?

The ladder anyway?

The governor britt's right.

So the appropriation basically gave my office kind of the lead in making sure it's done well.

So there will be a statute, the law says.

So they need to have the money raised and then we're going to find a place to put it.

It's going to be a bust.

I think it's I predict, no problems.

I think it's going to be a smooth process to get it where it needs to go.

Esthetically, though, no matter the merits of Governor Brett's spectacular life or the the unborn amendment, whatever the ideology, whatever the politics, whatever the philosophy behind it is the Capitol campus, in your estimation, getting a little crowded?

That's a great question.

I think, for example, on the Fitzy Brit statue, we actually have a wonderful place to put it next to another well-known lieutenant governor.

And there's kind of not symmetry now.

And we can have symmetry.

Of course we can't.

The reality is we can't have a statute for everything that is wonderful, good or praiseworthy.

It's one building and we have to maintain it.

I don't think we're there yet, but I think in any new legislation about statues, monuments and such, we have to keep in mind this capital is going to be here for hundreds and hundreds of years, and we don't know what's going to happen in our country.

And there may be something extraordinary that we do need space for in the future.

And we would hate to be in a situation where we couldn't do it because it was too crowded.

I think I'm I think I'm hearing you say, can we slow down a little bit after this one, after this?

It depends what it's for.

It's hard to with out the actual the issue at hand.

It's kind of hard to make that call.

But I would say if you're not considering space, you should always consider space.

Now you are one of three.

You're the latest of three candidates to announce for the land commissioner.

You as you cannot seek reelection as secretary of state, having been appointed to the position.

What do you want to be the land Commissioner?

The land commissioner is a wonderful office.

I mean, thinking on one side, you have this really good government corps of getting properties that have been claimed by the state and selling them efficiently and getting people back their money, keeping the state what it's owed.

And then you have kind of this policy driven side of you approve every lease, whether it's for natural gas, whether it's for bromine, whether it's for oil on state lands, and then you have a stewardship piece.

Our rivers are navigable waterways when they're being dredged, whether it's for sand or for gravel, you're trying to maintain just the ability of that for commerce to be used.

And I think when you add all that together, you have a varied job that is a wonderful opportunity to benefit this state.

Would you call it a policy position?

But it's really a performance job, as I mean, much of it involves simply just bookkeeping.

Well, I think that is the absolute core and you have to do that well.

Or even what you try to do from a policy front isn't going to work out.

Thanks very much for coming aboard.

Will you come back?

Absolutely.

Sure.

All right, Colchester, thanks very much.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Of course.

But that does it for us for this week.

As always, we thank you for joining us and we'll see you next week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.