Arkansas Week - May 26, 2023

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, The Arkansas Times and KU AR FM 89.

Welcome to Arkansas Week.

I'm Dawn Scott.

Thanks for being here.

Negotiations continue in Washington on a deal regarding the nation's debt ceiling.

If an agreement is not reached by next Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says that's when the country could run out of money to pay its debts.

Officials say such an unprecedented federal default could be devastating for the US and global economies.

And we'll talk.

About that in just a moment and then later in the program remembering a long time first district Congressman and in our latest good roots segment how native plants in Arkansas are helping the environment.

But first, the White House is pushed to raise the debt ceiling is facing fierce opposition from Republicans.

They are calling for spending cuts.

And we should note, as we record this program on Thursday, no compromise has been reached joining us to discuss this ongoing.

Negotiation and the impact and default could have on Arkansas is US Representative Bruce Western and a Republican from the state's 4th Congressional District And Congressman, thanks so much for being with us today.

Well, thank you, Don.

Greetings from Washington, DC where there are a lot of negotiations going on.

But we, like you said, this is Thursday.

We just took our final vote and the House is leaving DC.

The Senate hasn't been here this week.

But you know, we passed a bill to raise the debt limit.

We sent it to the Senate, and so far the House is the only body in Washington, DC that's taken any action on the debt limit.

You know, I understand that the districts for the the Republican leadership has told members they can return to their districts for the Memorial Day weekend, but could be called back for a vote.

So what's the status from?

From what you're hearing, could that happen?

I expect it will happen.

We have a new House rule with this new House majority that we don't just shove bills on the House floor without having a chance to read them and debate them.

So we've got a 72 hour rule.

That's why we were pushing this week to get a deal done so that we had time to pass the bill before we left out for the Memorial Day weekend.

But we'll have at least 72 hours from the time a bill that's filed until we will be voting on it.

They told us that we will get a like a 24 hour notice, hopefully ahead of the 72 hours.

Required by our rules before we can take a bill up on the floor, but I fully expect we'll be back next week.

That really depends on the Senate and depends on President Biden coming to an agreement on doing something to raise the debt limit.

We're pretty solid in our stance that we're not going to.

Pass or raise the debt limit without having some kind of spending reforms.

To me that's just crazy to run up this debt and just to raise the limit without addressing the problem of how you you got so far in debt in the 1st place and we're asking for reasonable reforms.

The bill we passed out of the house was called the Limit Save Grow Act.

That's exactly what it does.

We we want to go back to 2022 level spending, which was.

December of of last year in that bill, the Democrats who are in control, put in a tremendous amount of increase for this fiscal year.

All we're saying is go back to 2022 for the baseline and kept that spending at 1% per year.

We're also saying to claw back billions of unspent COVID dollars.

The pandemic's over.

We shouldn't be leaving a lot of federal money out there in the state coffers.

We should be bringing those back and putting them in the treasury of the US with the debt problems that we have.

And we're also saying that we want to grow the economy.

And part of that is from a bill that I worked a lot on, HR1, the Lower Energy Cost Act, which we included in the debt limit and this would allow us to release.

American energy production, both fossil fuels and green energy as well as opening up mining in the US There's a tremendous amount of demand for for mining and for minerals and elements.

We're blessed with those minerals and elements, but there's this not in my backyard mentality and right now we're buying all these, you know the copper and the rare earth elements is coming out of China.

So we're exporting our wealth when we could be producing that here at home and if we were to.

Produce more energy, more elements.

It has a lot of positive benefits to our society and to our economy.

You're talking about how paying jobs, a lot more people working tax revenues coming into the federal government.

So you'd be attacking the deficit both from cutting spending and increasing the amount.

Of money coming into the federal government, which we're at record levels.

The federal government's collected a record level of tax revenue.

The problem is we have a spending problem.

Well, where will these cuts affect our Kansans specifically?

I think I heard a clip of President Biden saying something like they're asking me to approve all these wacko cuts requiring work requirements for for some.

You know, people to get, you know, government benefits and what are some other items that would directly impact the people here in Arkansas?

I think there's some confusion here about how it really would affect someone's day-to-day life.

I don't think it would affect people hardly at all because we're talking about going back to December of 2022.

That's what we're asking.

You know, take away the tremendous increase that Democrats put in the omnibus spending bill at the end of December and say we're going to start at 2022 and go from there.

You know, Washington, DC is the only place where if you, if you don't increase the budget by the amount that some government agency says you need to increase, if they consider that a cut, but we're talking about going back to 2022, increasing it by 1%.

And putting some physical discipline into our monetary policy and into our budgeting, because we're $32 trillion in debt, that's like $95,000 per American citizen.

You know, kids born today and they're coming to this world with $95,000 of debt on their shoulder.

And we cannot keep spending like this.

So we have.

Rational policies.

We're not asking for for major cuts.

They're saying major cuts because we're talking about not going with the 2023 levels, which were major spending increases at the end of of 2022.

We also, you mentioned work requirements.

This is something that I think most people will agree that for able bodied working age adults, we're not talking about kids.

We're talking not talking about people with dependents.

We're not talking about elderly people, not talking about disabled people, able bodied, working age adults.

If you're going to get benefits from the federal government, you're going to have to be involved in some program to get back to work.

You know, I want to ask about what happens if, if there's a default, there's there's a lot of fear among our Kansans, among American people.

Of what that really looks like now, the House Speaker said that there won't be a default, that negotiations are are are moving along, people are working hard there in Washington and they won't stop.

But how confident are you that there won't be a default?

Well, I'm.

I'm confident from a House member that we passed a bill to prevent a default.

We sent that to the Senate.

The Senate has not even taken the bill up.

They won't even have a hearing on it.

So I'm confident that we've done our job, that there won't be a default.

I actually believe that this will all get negotiated out and and, you know, all come out in the wash.

But there's we're still a long ways apart.

And, you know, it started off with President Biden saying it was nonnegotiable, Chuck Schumer saying it's nonnegotiable and they wouldn't even meet with Speaker McCarthy.

But we did the hard work.

We spent hours and days and weeks.

And even months putting together this debt limit package, we took it through regular order.

It went through committees, People had an opportunity to debate it, to put amendments on it.

It came to the floor and we passed the bill.

House Republicans, with a few Democrats, passed the bill that raises the debt limit.

That puts some sensible spending reforms in place.

And the ball is in the Senate's court, and the ball's in President Biden's court.

So.

You know, people want to ask what the effects of a shutdown would be.

They may want to talk to them because they may not be taking it seriously enough.

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I I believe I did read somewhere that the president could invoke the 14th Amendment and just raise the debt ceiling without any negotiations, without any, you know, give on his his part to to agree to any spending cuts whatsoever.

Could he do that?

He's that's that's some talk that's being tossed around here in DC and I guess it's made it out to other parts of the country.

But even Janet Yellen, his Treasury Secretary, said that's unconstitutional.

If he did do that, there would obviously be court challenges and.

I'm not a lawyer, but a lot of smart, smart lawyers that I've talked to said that he can't do that.

The 14th Amendment doesn't give him the power to to raise the debt limit.

So now he may try it.

I think a more realistic thing that could happen if the if the president can't come to his sentences on raising the debt limit is that.

Janet Yellen is probably going to find some change in the couch cushions.

There's projected to be a lot of income come in in the middle of June, so I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the January 1st date moved out.

But from where we're standing and where we're working, January 1st is the date.

That's when the Treasury Secretary said that the US is not going to be able to pay its bills anymore.

Again, we passed the debt limit increase $1.5 trillion more.

We tied spending restraints to that with other things.

And it the the least the Senate should do is take up that bill, make changes.

If they don't lock what we have in it, send it back to the House and we could go to conference.

Now.

The clock's ticking on that.

But they should have been doing this weeks ago because they had the bill and plenty of time to do it, but they they thought they would just run out the clock and we would cave on this.

But I don't.

I think the American people are behind what we're doing in the house because we're taking a rational approach.

We're taking a responsible approach.

We haven't turned a blind eye to this.

We've been working on it before we were even in the majority, our conference was talking about how do we deal with the debt limit.

But from day one, after the the 15 speaker votes, we have been working on a debt limit package.

We passed it at the end of April and it's the administration and the Senate that are not doing their job, but they still got time to, well, there's this sort of looming June 1st deadline.

Is there time beyond that?

That's what I was saying.

I Secretary said Yellen has said June 1st, so the whole world's focused on June 1st.

I wouldn't be surprised if she were to come back out and say, well, we found some more money here, we made some cuts there and we can go a little bit longer.

And like I said, the quarterly tax revenues will be in on the 15th, so there will be more funding in the federal coffers, but there we shouldn't be.

Anticipating a longer date, the president Chuck Schumer should get together, figure out what how they're going to deal with the bill that we've put out there and pat and raise the debt limit.

We've got a lot of other work to do.

Once we raise the debt limit, we'll know how to write the appropriation bills for to fund the government for next year and.

That's that's going to be a a huge amount of work that we're already working on, but we don't know that top line number yet.

You know when you you talk to just everyday our Kansans, they worry about things like buying a car or their credit card debt or maybe buying a house or you know potentially what happens with their money in a bank, what interest rates will do.

And so there there becomes this sort of real threat of fear through people.

But then you know, really if you, if you studied this and you look back over the course of history here, we here we were in 2011 as well.

It just seems to be how Congress gets what it wants in terms of spending and the president maintaining his, you know, control over over the debt ceiling date.

What are your thoughts on that?

I mean should people be nervous or should they just see this as, you know, part of negotiations and what goes on in Washington?

Well, you you mentioned everyday families.

And you know when when families face a budget issue, they sit down and go through their income and their expenses and they figure out how they can get the expenses in line with the income.

And when you limit out your credit card, it's not responsible to, you know, call and ask for a credit increase or apply for another credit card without addressing the problems that got you limited out in the first place.

So.

On a much larger scale, that's what we're doing in Congress.

We've maxed out the credit card and we're saying we can't go on like this.

This out of control spending has to change and and that's the debate that we're having, so.

You know it it can get messy in Washington and people tend to pay more attention on issues like these when there are deadlines.

And it puts more pressure on the whole city of DC to get together and to work.

And that's why I think we will eventually get it, get it worked out.

Well, you mentioned going back to the 2022 level spending and clawing back some of the COVID dollars, but there are other cuts in here.

Can you can you share?

You know what?

Your intimate knowledge with us if you will, on what what is being cut besides that there's nothing being cut in this debt limit package.

We're saying this, the spending levels go back to 2022 and then we'll work on the budget for 2024.

We're in the 2023 year budget cycle right now.

The only thing this debt limit does in the negotiations is sets the total number.

And we have to write appropriation bills and prioritize where the spending will be next year.

And again, we're talking about what the spending was in December with 1% added to it.

That's the full pool of money.

And the Appropriations Committee goes in and writes 12 appropriation bills and distributes that money to all the federal agencies.

So all of this about draconian cuts, nothing has been cut yet.

All we're talking about is the top line number and once we get that number we can go in and prioritize where the the spending will be.

And again I find it hard to classify a cut something that.

Taking away a top line number that's been in effect for six months roughly and saying we're going to go with a lower number for next year when we build out the budget.

Only in DC is is that become a, you know, your hair's on fire emergency and in a draconian cut to it and it's not rational at all to go down that train of thought.

Well, I appreciate you know all your information, Congressman.

Thank you so much.

Don't go just yet because on another topic, earlier this week, you and other members of Arkansas congressional delegation paid tribute on the House floor to former First District Representative Marion Barry.

He died last Friday at the age of 80.

He was a Democrat who was born in Stuttgart and he served 7 terms in Congress from 1996 to.

2010 and while Congressman Berry was a frequent guest on Arkansas PBS, here we have a look at his appearance during the debates in 2004.

Stay with me, Congressman.

I think that the United States of America is the greatest thing ever done by man with the Divine Inspirational God Almighty.

We just need to get back in this country to treating everyone fair, giving everyone an opportunity not using.

Public policy or the federal law to give one business an advantage over another that they can't achieve the good business practices.

I am so thankful to have been allowed to serve in the time that I've been in the Congress, and I cannot begin to describe what an honor that I think it is to do this.

You know, some say politics back then was a lot different than it is today.

And while you didn't meet him until after he left office, what sticks out to you about about him and his legacy?

Well, once I I met him in person, he's just a very warm individual down to earth, you know, all the things you've heard about him, That's what I found him to be in person.

And you know, if you watch that video.

He he sounds more like the Republican than a modernday Democrat in what he was saying he I remember one of the OR some of the quotes I've been reading that he said he said we're using I think the American Express to pay off the visa so much more physically responsible back then you know he very involved in the the **** supper at Gillette opening up his barn for the pre **** supper and he's he's going to be missed and.

Even though he's been away from Congress quite some time, the people who were here definitely remember him.

They tell a lot of fun stories about when Representative Barry was representing the 1st District of Arkansas.

All right.

Congressman Bruce Westerman, thank you for all your great information and your thoughts today.

We appreciate you.

Thank you very much for being with us.

Thank you, Don.

Have a great day.

You too.

And finally, this month's Good Roots segment.

It's about pollinator gardens and how native plants in Arkansas help the environment.

I've always been interested since I was a child growing up in Chicago, where there's very little nature.

As I neared retirement, I started thinking about transitioning over and what I wanted to do once I was retired.

A neighbor of mine and also a fellow employee at the law school were very interested in becoming master naturalists and so we joined the master naturalists together and we went through the training together and it was wonderful.

My name is Lynn Foster and I am very active in the Central Arkansas Master Naturalists.

What got me interested in native plants was Doug Ptolemy and his work in this area.

We like to think some of us as human beings, that we're kind of separate from nature and we're not a part of it, but we are, and we're starting to see environmental disasters in some places.

We're in the middle of what has been called the 6th grade extinction, also known as the Anthropocene extinction, which means caused by people.

Because we are rapidly driving species to extinction, and most of that is because we are destroying their habitat with native plants in our yards, we bring their habitat back and provide places for them to live once again.

And this is kind of the heart of why natives are so important.

If we want the upper levels of the ecosystem in our yards, we have to have native plants.

It all starts with native plants.

2/3 of our vegetables come from pollinated plants and so it's very important for the general public to produce food and the only way to do that is for the bees and the other insects to pollinate all the flowers.

My name is Bob Callens and the organization I helped found was Keeping Rock Beautiful.

This is our latest project and it's the Pollinator Garden.

The Pollinator garden are native plants that attract insects, butterflies.

Birds, that kind of thing.

We've got a supplier that has collected the native seed in this region and has grown them for about a year.

So they were a year old when we planted these.

They all are interconnected with all the other trees and oaks and the ecosystem that is in this park.

Here it's a more display type garden.

I did the layout of this.

I'm a retired landscape architect and we broke it into quadrants and each quadrant has the same layout.

Any section.

So to be more showy when they all start blooming and everything, I've always been involved civically but in Little Rock, and we've always been concerned about the beautication of Little Rock and its parks and that type of thing.

The first step here was to eradicate the weeds that are in this site, and we had to follow the instructions of the city.

The great thing about this particular park, because it is public, it's educating more people.

We have so many people stop by and ask what's going on, and I point him to the.

QR code we have there, and we've gotten donations that way from it, too.

I think people could do any of these pollinator plants in their own yard.

Well, my name is Janet Lanza, and I'm the coordinator of Arkansas Wild Spaces.

I'm a retired ecology professor.

Once I retired, Lynn Foster had this idea to have Arkansas Wild Spaces, and I joined her in the effort to develop the program.

I tell people that I'm working as hard right now.

Yes, when I was getting paid.

But I feel like I'm doing a tremend, hopefully anyway, doing a tremendous service for the central part of Arkansas.

Basically what we do is try to persuade people that native plants are really important to put in our yards.

If we want to preserve natural ecosystems, we have to find a way that their food is available.

When we first go to a house, we explain to the homeowners, who we call land stewards, that we're not going to add more preserves.

So we have an opportunity to make natural areas in our yards.

What people need to do is remove invasive species and then add natives.

Reduce the lawn.

Then we walk around and see what they already have.

We identify invasives.

If they don't know what they are, we also ask them what kind of the yard do they want and that informs us about how they want to use the yard.

Lynn and I developed huge store of materials.

We have spreadsheets.

These spreadsheets help us figure out what would be good in a particular place.

We can think of plants basically in three categories.

First, there are native and some of them which we call keystones are especially good because they provide the most benefit in terms of the life that can live off of them.

And then we have non-native, non invasive plants.

Those don't do much in terms of supporting the ecosystem because they're not going to host insects.

They may help pollinators though and they won't take over your yard and force out native species.

And then there are the problem plants and those would be the non-native invasives.

Those will not support the ecosystem.

So insects can't live off them.

And they also are very aggressive plants.

They typically have very aggressive reproductive systems and they will force out the native plants in your yard.

This is an example of one of the millions of special relationships that we see within ecosystems.

This is a pipeline swallowtail Caterpillar and if it's lucky it will grow up to be a pipeline swallowtail butterfly.

You don't have a viable ecosystem if you don't have caterpillars in it.

Birds need an incredible incredible amount of caterpillars to reproduce.

This is one such Caterpillar.

There's a quote that says you only protect what you love if kids are inside all the time watching TV, playing video games.

They're not going to be outside getting excited about seeing monarch butterflies that are traveling from northern US and Canada all the way down to Mexico to spend time over the winter.

If they don't see that, they won't care about it.

This is something very concrete that people can do on an individual basis, and if we get enough people together to do this sort of thing, I do think we can have an impact.

This segment of Good Roots is made possible by support from Acre Trader, and that is it for Arkansas Week.

We hope you enjoy a relaxing Memorial Day.

Thanks for being here.

I'm Dawn Scott.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, The Arkansas Times and KUARFM 89.