Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

What I like about Steve Farley’s newsletters is that they give me the chance to do a longer post with no actual work on my part. Thank you, Steve.

In his latest newsletter, Farley talks about Republican attempts to mess with, no, gut, no, abolish Health Care Group. Health Care Group provides an easy way for small buisnesses (especially those that only have one or two employees) to get insurance for themselves and their employees. Health Care Group, although state sponsored, is funded through member premiums and has been for nearly two years. Sounds like the sort of public-private partnership that Republicans always claim to be for. You’d think that and you’d be wrong.

The insurance companies hate this program because they feel that it is competition with them.  Never mind that for many of these buisinesses, insurance for their employees is either nearly prohibitively expensive or unattainable at all, so saying that the government is stealing customers is pretty darned weak. Republicans are so eager to kill this program, which has the support of the East Valley Chambers of Commerce Alliance and the Marana Chamber of Commerce (anti-free market organizations, I guess), that they plan to introduce a striker to another bill to aboilish it.

When this session started, Farley and allies from the legislature and the business community thought they could get rid of the “Bare Period” that makes it almost impossible for some buisinesses to participate in the program. They probably didn’t think they’d have to fight for the program’s survival.

Farley also talks about another bill:

One of the most egregious examples in my mind was HB2720, a bill which came before Ways & Means on February 13. It was extremely clear from testimony that this bill would create a massive tax break worth millions of dollars to basically benefit only the USAA insurance company at their one location in north Phoenix. The bill offered a tax credit (basically a cash rebate) for the amount of 15% of their gross wages paid per year. The bill laid out specifications for who could qualify for this credit which exactly described USAA and almost no one else — pure coincidence of course. Despite its obvious status as a massive giveaway of taxpayer dollars to one company, it passed out of committee on a party-line vote of 6-4 with all Republicans in favor. It has not yet been sent to caucus or COW–I will be watching.

Nice to see our boys in Phoenix are up to their old tricks. Steve ain’t happy with another game that would be familiar to many long time capitol watchers:

Meanwhile down on the House floor, the Speaker keeps placing bills on the COW and Third Read agendas, only to pull them if any significant controversy crops up. Which means there are a whole lot of Republican bills being skipped and put off until later in the hope that more arms can be twisted. Last session, this did not happen–the bills passed quite easily regardless of their nature. This year, we’ve already defeated a couple of them, and we’re poised to dispatch a whole lot of bad bills if only the Speaker would allow us to lay into them. He’s obviously pretty worried. He can’t simply put off the controversial bills indefinitely–perhaps he wants to hold us hostage until June?

The Senate seems to be moving ahead in a reasonable, evenhanded way, and with good speed. We hear they are proceeding with a bipartisan budget approach that we in the House envy. And their leadership is purportedly not happy with the ideological stalling game being played by House leadership–soon they will be twiddling their thumbs waiting for us to get through our backlog of bills.

Farley would also like all of us to be at the ADOT Transit Plan meeting at 5:30 at the Randolph Golf Course Club House, which is on Alvernon about half way between Broadway and 22nd.