The State House Budget

The budget in the state house is one of those topics that I am keeping my eye on this morning and throughout the rest of this week. I mean, at this point, there is nothing that is terribly surprising about what's going on with that. I believe Jason Taylor shared a story about this in his original newsbreak as we were heading into the show, too. $529 million, by the way. And the Democrats have muscled that budget through the House at this point. So the fight's not over, but it is. I mean, it is. At this point... With Janet Mills signaling her support and approval for the millionaire's tax, for obviously the checks, you know, there was some changes to that, obviously. But with all that happening, there is really now no longer any doubt that it passes. Why is that? Because in Maine, much like most states, we don't have any sort of element inside for a minority to stop. something from happening. So if the majority is in total control, and you, you, the wise people of the state of Maine, you, in your infinite wisdom, decided to hand the keys to the kingdom to the most lunatic left individuals you could possibly imagine in both the House and the Senate, as well as now the Blaine House. And you have a craven politician in the Blaine House who is desperate to try to win an unwinnable race now. and is willing to suck up in any way she possibly can in the last desperate attempt to make her relevant. Given all the mix of those things together, you are going to pass this perhaps the worst budget I have ever seen in my entire life. And I don't mean to do hyperbole, but it's not hyperbole. This is, in fact, a travesty of a budget. And there's never really any doubt at this point that it's going to pass. The Democrats pushed through the state budget edition, including $300 relief checks and a millionaire's tax narrowly in a divided House of Representatives on Wednesday, putting it on track to pass later this week. The total proposal, as I said before, $529 million. And it's the last state budget from Term Limited, Governor Janet Mills. She has kept a firm hold on business in the statehouse for most of her tenure, but it has slipped somewhat in recent weeks, given her status in the U.S. Senate race against Graham Platner. The budget debated on Wednesday was another divisive fight between Democrats and Republicans, and in the end, Mills effectively executed a trade for the relief checks that she prioritized in her state of the state address in January in exchange for the millionaire's tax, a progressive demand that the governor opposed as recently as last year. quote, we are continuing to deliver for the main people, said Representative Drew Gatine of Westbrook, the co-chair of the legislature's budget committee in a floor speech. The House passed the budget in a narrow 76 to 73 vote on Wednesday. Only one Democrat, Representative Tiffany John Roberts of South Berwick, voted with the Republicans against the measure.

The majority party systematically voted down a ream of amendments that came in from Republicans. Now, again, I said that there was really no doubt about this, because even though the House is very closely divided, it doesn't particularly matter because there's no filibuster. There's no real mechanism for a minority party to have any control over the system. The only thing that they have is the calendar. And that's something that Janet Mills decided, you know, like the nuclear option, essentially, right, to blow up early in her tenure as governor in the interest of getting things done with only her party. And it's how she's governed since. And just remember, she promised not to do this in two campaigns for governor. She said she wouldn't do that in two campaigns for governor. She was going to be a collaborative bipartisan governor who went across the aisle and worked with Republicans and came together on things. And then as soon as she got what she wanted, she turned into an extreme partisan who did only what she wanted. So. take that with a grain of salt every time you hear her one of our campaign ads you know i think perhaps a little bit more on that is certainly warranted if you'd like to join us for that conversation uh not in that i'm really going to be debating much about what's inside of it i think at this point we've covered most of that you have the millionaires tax you have the three hundred dollars checks and in the bdn article i was reading before we went to our break it said that Janet Mills was willing to trade support for the millionaire's tax for the $300 checks. Now, it's an interesting little dynamic here to tug on a bit. I'm not sure that's accurate, for one. I'm not sure that there was indeed some sort of a tit-for-tat, a quid pro quo, if you will. I don't know if that's true, although with the BDN reporting that, maybe they've heard some rumblings that there was. One thing that was clear, though, is that when she proposed in her state of the state address that we send these $300 relief checks, there was skepticism even amongst the Democrats for this. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. The first reason for that... is that you had, I think, a significant number of the people in the legislature who actually are kind of grand platinum people. She's in this U.S. Senate primary, and obviously it's not going well for her, but going back to the earlier part of the legislative term, you know, there was a progressive element, and there always has been inside the state legislature, especially in the House, I think. And that progressive element... I think is very much behind her opponent. So giving her a policy that she was proposing, which is the most obvious vote buying scheme I've ever seen in my entire life, didn't really sound all that attractive to them.

It wasn't something, you know, why do her a favor if you think her time is over and you think it's time for someone else to perhaps take the flag and run with it? So you had this skepticism from that. And I got to tell you, there was even some skepticism from some halfway sort of kind of a little bit principled people who said, that's kind of a dumb idea. Because it is kind of a dumb idea. I mean, you know, would anyone be sad? that they had $300. If I hand, Jeremy, if I handed you a check for $300, would you be sad? No. Okay. I would appreciate that. I'm sure you would. Let me ask you another question, though, Jeremy. You have, of course, noted the cost of groceries and gas and shirts and beard trimmers, beard trimmers, of course. All going up. All going up and all quite high. How long would you say that that extra $300 would last you? Or put maybe a little bit differently. How much room would it buy you? Would it make your life easier to afford for like a week or two? A little longer? I'd say a week or two. Okay. Not more than that. Let me flash forward then to week three. Yeah. Since you said a week or two, week three, does that $300 matter to you at all? At that point, no. At that point, no. Okay, so... I'd still appreciate it, though. I appreciate you working with me on the Socratic method here. So in week three, after that little tiny bit of money that you were just given by me and my generosity, no longer can help you all that much. Your life was basically where it was before. Energy costs, you know, still high. Health care costs still high. Your rent for your apartment still sucks. You know, all those things are still what they were prior to it, right? It basically bought you a temporary reprieve of a couple weeks where it was slightly easier but still hard. And now we're right back to being hard, right? So it will do nothing, is my point here. Going back to the Janet Mills proposal, it will do nothing for anyone. It's a nice thing to have. It's great, but it's not going to fundamentally alter any of the things that are making life hard for Mainers. Things, by the way, that she has had eight years to do something about and has only made worse, including, by the way, today's topic of education, which I'll get to, I'm sure, after I have our conversation. So there's all of these elements here in it. And then on top of it, you're rating the rainy day fund for it. So you have this meaningless, pointless thing that does nothing. And you are taking hundreds of millions of dollars out of the rainy day fund in order to actually do it. Yeah, there was even some Democrats that were like, okay, that's a little much. That's really stupid. Because it is. Because it is. So perhaps Mills, I don't know what her intention would be with the millionaire's tax, you know, if it really was a...

a deal or a quid pro quo or whatever. But definitely, I would say that the support for the $300 checks was contingent on her supporting the millionaire's tax. So it might have been one direction that there was a little, you know, she's trying to buy votes from the main voter, or buy votes from main voters, yeah, by this scheme for $300 checks. And perhaps now she's buying votes in the legislature for supporting the millionaires tax.