OPINION

JOHN BRUMMETT: Saved by the minority

Once again, Arkansas Democrats have risen from their ashes to deliver Gov. Asa Hutchinson from his Republican Party and the state from itself.

Time and again over recent years, Arkansas legislative Democrats have voted near-unanimously in their anemic minority to accede to Hutchinson's plea to continue Obamacare's Medicaid expansion in the state.

Anemic is the wrong word in some contexts, such as that one. Medicaid expansion requires a three-fourths majority and the governor's own majority party is split between the reasonable and the not.

A three-fourths majority on the side of reason will, in such circumstances, require that badly outnumbered Democrats plug in the Republican gaps.

We enjoy the Arkansas Works program providing health insurance to more than 200,000 poor people--one of Asa's prides and joys--for one plain and simple reason: Arkansas legislative Democrats did the imperfectly right thing in order to serve the broader need, overlooking Republican meanness such as the program's legally dubious work requirement.

There have been state legislative Democrats who were tempted over the years to engage in Washington-style politics and let Asa wither in the misery inflicted by his party--in budget problems, in the political fallout of closed rural hospitals, in poor folks stripped of health insurance and in higher premiums for all of us after the 200,000 public subsidies were yanked from the pool. But, in the noble end, they yielded not to temptation.

So, on this most recent Monday, the small Democratic delegation held noses and delivered amid broader imperfection the governor's reasonable highway program.

That imperfection had to do with the fuller tax-policy context of this session, which has delivered millions of dollars through income-tax cuts to the wealthiest and now runs up gasoline taxes for working people. But with the income-tax cut settled law, the issue became whether to let the highways crumble. And the Democrats--22 of the mere 24--said they couldn't do that.

And, yes, I must acknowledge at this point that the income-tax cut for rich people got nine votes from the 24-member Democratic caucus, pushing it to 82 votes, seven more than the three-fourths required.

So, yes, Democrats can deliver bad policy as well.

That Democrats saved Asa and the state in the House on Monday on a highway program is simpler and clearer math, considering that passage required a simple 51-vote majority that not even 74 Republicans could muster.

Two tax measures were proposed, one a mere punt to the taxpayers at the ballot box in November 2020.

Republicans voted 48-26 for the bill to impose a wholesale motor fuel tax amounting to 3 cents a gallon on gasoline and 6 cents a gallon on diesel fuel, and to index those rates for minuscule cost-of-business increases year-to-year.

Republicans voted 45-29 to refer to the voters a constitutional amendment permanently imposing a currently temporary half-cent sales tax with proceeds dedicated to highways.

What that meant was that three of the 24 Democrats needed to vote for the fuel tax and six of the Democrats needed to vote for the amendment referral.

These House Democrats could have played another Washington game, which is to conspire among themselves to provide enough votes for a desired end while giving license beyond that to Democrats wanting to vote against the proposal for some advantage or point. Before 2010, when Arkansas had Democratic congressional members like Mike Ross and Marion Berry, Nancy Pelosi was forever releasing those two to vote against measures that were going to pass anyway.

But state House Democrats eschewed even that game. Twenty-three of them dutifully voted for the fuel tax and 22 of them dutifully voted to refer the constitutional amendment. Call it right-thing overkill.

Later that afternoon a chipper Hutchinson poked his head in the first-floor state Capitol press room and declared a thumbs-up good day based on passage of his highway bills.

He did not announce that he was switching parties.

At any rate, all those local mayors and chamber of commerce officials appreciative of the Legislature for a highway program can thank that little caucus over in the corner. It's the one that always gets ignored or taken for granted.

To be fair, Hutchinson has delivered too many millions to too many millionaires through tax cuts to be cast as anything other than a Republican.

He's just not as unreasonable as most. He's at least as reasonable as the nine House Democrats who passed his income-tax cut for him.

Meanwhile, the governor has defied neo-Confederate and nominal Republican members of the House State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee and endorsed the bill by House Democratic leader Rep. Charles Blake of Little Rock to redefine the legal meaning of that fourth star on the state flag that now celebrates the Confederacy.

Hutchinson continues on some days--if more rarely than in his first term--to be not all that bad.

------------v------------

John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 03/07/2019

Upcoming Events