Live from Music Row, Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton to the newsmaker line to discuss federal education funding, charter schools, choice lanes, the top priority before the session ends, and more.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line now, a very good friend, Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives Speaker Cam Sexton.
Good morning, Speaker Sexton.
Sexton: Good morning. How are you?
Leahy: Doing well and we’re delighted to have you on here this morning. And it has been an eventful session so far of the Tennessee General Assembly. You got a lot done. You got the bill that stopped gender mutilation for kids under the age of 18. So congratulations on that. That went through pretty quickly.
Sexton: It did. It did. We were able to do a couple of things early that moved us through the committee. Usually, we take a little bit of time to get committees up and going, but this year we got off with a sprint and we’re still moving along.
Leahy: I’m a big fan of the idea that you suggested that we look at telling the federal government, we don’t want their Department of Education money. There’s a bill that’s gonna set up a task force to look at that.
Commissioner of Education, Penny Schwinn’s set to head that up. Six legislators, two superintendents, and two teachers, but no conservative talk show hosts on that task force. (Laughter) Are you gonna fix that problem?
Sexton: We can. We can always have testimony. I think it’s something important for us to do. My thought is, we talked about state’s rights and the 10th Amendment, but we continue to take federal money that takes away the state, our state’s rights places burdens and restrictions on us to use that money, and when those areas are federal education dollars because they also use Title IX to come through on the backside because we take the money and try to put things in our classroom or requires to do different tests in the classroom.
And I think that those burdens are more than they should be. And so I think fund that money ourselves instead of allowing the Department of Education to fund it for us.
Leahy: So this interesting development last week, of course, the Speaker of the State Senate Randy McNally involved in these embarrassing social media posts. We’ve called for his resignation because he’s passed his prime. I think that’s an example of it.
But interestingly, there’s this weird situation where there’s a state representative in the House, not in the state Senate, but in the House. Representative Todd Warner, he’s been in the doghouse, I think, for any number of reasons. So he puts out a letter and says it’s time for the state Senate leader to resign. Any thoughts on where that’s going to go?
Sexton: No, not yet. We’re, I think from what I hear based on the senators, none of them have come out and expressed that. My understanding is the Lieutenant Governor has called all of them personally and had conversations.
There are a lot of people who have opinions on it and it’s really a decision of the State Senate, whether or not they want to do anything. It doesn’t seem like at this point that they want to, so we’ll just have to wait and see what they decide or if they decide to do anything at all.
Leahy: Did you have any conversations with State Representative Todd Warner before or after he put that letter out? It’s not really a state House representative issue, it’s a state Senate issue.
Sexton: It’s a Senate issue. There were things used in there that you would have to know the person. I don’t think he’s ever sat down and had any conversations with him. That’s his opinion. He can say what he wants to, we live in a free country, and so he’s entitled to that. I don’t know if people agree with how he worded it or what he said.
Some may agree with the conclusion as you do on what needs to happen. But I will say, he’s never been in the doghouse. I think he likes to say he’s been in the doghouse. Leadership didn’t try to stop him or stop any of his bills or anything. I think that’s the way he wants to word it. Sometimes that’s just simply not the case.
Leahy: Tell me what’s on the agenda for the remaining couple weeks of the Tennessee General Assembly session.
Sexton: The biggest thing is the budget. We’re waiting for the governor’s appropriation amendment, which will be probably about two or three weeks. And then that will give us our timeline on when we’ll be able to be out of there. I think if you’re looking at different things that are still in play, I think choice lanes are up this week.
Saving the lives of mothers is up tonight on the House floor. We have some legislation dealing with charter schools. So there’s still a full plate to come. Constitutional carry on the House. True constitutional carry is being passed through the House.
So we’re hopeful that we will get that to the floor. We’re waiting to see what direction the Senate Judicial Committee wants to go. But there are still some big items coming through, at least on the House side.
Leahy: With the charter school legislation, would that expand charter schools? What are the details of the charter school legislation?
Sexton: Yes, the charter school legislation, there are a couple of different pieces. One is looking at residential boarding schools for at-risk kids. You have kids in some parts of our state that are homeless and living out of cars with their families and that’s not the best environment. You also have children whose parents are incarcerated, and one-parent families in high-crime areas.
Then numerous different types of things for at-risk kids. And trying to give them an opportunity their parents an opportunity to allow them to go to a boarding school like a public charter school that would give them a fresh opportunity to be successful and get out of a bad situation that they’re in to allow the family maybe to get back up on their feet as well.
That’s one idea coming. The other is offering a hybrid charter school program for people to go to a charter school for three or four days a week and then do remote learning from home one or two days a week to give parents also a little different alternative to what they’re being offered in their normal K 12.
Leahy: What’s the prospect for the choice lane legislation? We had Butch Eley here in the studio to talk about it. I think there are a lot of people who like it and a lot of people who don’t like these ideas. Where do you think that’s going to go?
Sexton: Right now, I would say it has the votes to pass on the House floor. I don’t know the exact vote count, but based on how it came through different committees it seems like the votes are there to pass it. It’s one alternative to improving our roads. It doesn’t change any road currently that’s being driven on, it’s only for new types of roads that are being built in highly congested areas.
And there are all four big cities in our state that have that issue. But it would also allow us to continue to build out, enroll communities in suburban areas, improve the roads, and build new roads.
And the main reason is that the congestion is gonna cost us about $26 to $29 billion. And so we’re trying to develop new ways to help fund those areas. But at the same time, do not lose focus on the rural areas and suburban areas that need roads as well.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Cameron Sexton” by Speaker Cameron Sexton. Background Photo “Tennessee State Capitol” by Thomas R Machnitzki. CC BY 3.0.
Live from Music Row, Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
Michael, the Biden administration has submitted its budget and the CBO, which I generally disregard because they are required by law to avoid dynamic scoring. And what dynamic scoring means is really simple. If the current tax rate is 50 percent and Congress were to increase the tax rate to 100 percent under the CBO requirements, they have to say that revenue will double.
Now, as Dr. Arthur Laffer has said, there are two tax rates that generate zero revenue. One is a zero tax rate, and the other is a 100 percent tax rate. And so if you don’t include dynamic scoring, you’re not going to get a good result. So it’s biased toward bigger government, but even then, the Biden budget calls for spending to increase to 25 percent of our economy.
To give you just a sense of things, from 1973 to 1922, that’s a 50-year period, the average was 21 percent. And so this is 3 percent more of the whole economy, which the whole economy at a $29 trillion economy, what you’re looking at is almost a trillion dollars a year of extra spending.
And that just won’t work. What I’m saying is, when you spend that much money at the federal level, all the wheels will come off. And we’re talking about here over the next 10 years. Now, just to try to give some perspective, in 1970, total Medicare spending, total Medicare spending was 7.5 billion, in 1970.
This figure has grown to almost 900 billion. It’s grown almost 100 times since it started 50 years ago. In 1966, Medicaid was just under $1 billion. That’s when the program started. Now it is over $650 billion. And the federal government is now trying to say that food should be part of Medicaid.
So the people who are on Medicaid can get free food under Medicaid. There’s no top on how much is spent once the benefit itself is defined. And so as we merrily go along talking about balloons and all kinds of issues that are important, but compared to Biden’s budget that he has given the Congress, anything else that we’re talking about right now for the next few years, this issue is the one that should be top of mind.
I see almost no reporting on it whatsoever by the media. They just have said he’s introduced his budget, and that’s about all they’ll tell you. And it does have in it, in his own budget, $2 trillion deficits as far as the eye can see. And that’s just unsustainable. Any reasonable person would say that’s unsustainable. But nobody in the media seems to be complaining.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Joe Biden” by President Joe Biden. Background Photo “” by U.S. Capitol. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Live from Music Row, Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Nashville mayoral candidate Natisha Brooks in studio to discuss her stance on the Titans Stadium deal, reduction of Metro Council members, police support, education, and fixing the budget.
Leahy: We are in studio with the sartorially splendid Natisha Brooks. She’s running for mayor. Natishafornashville.org. That website will be up in a couple of days over the weekend. Natisha, are you ready for the big question?
Brooks: Yes, I’m ready.
Leahy: All of the experts tell us that to mount a successful campaign for mayor. The election is going to be in August. August 3rd.
Brooks: Correct.
Leahy: You need about $2 million.
Brooks: That is correct.
Leahy: Now, I looked at your financial reports from the time you were in for Congress. There were fewer zeros on that report.
Brooks: Yes.
Leahy: And so the question is, do you agree that will take $2 million to win?
Brooks: Oh, yes.
Leahy: You do?
Brooks: I already predict the outcome. Myself against Sharon Hurt. And if you don’t know who Sharon Hunt is, she’s going to play the color card. We’re going to do the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We’re going to play the character card. Bring character back to Nashville.
Not your color. We’re not vying to try to be the first black mayor. We’re trying to bring character, not color. Character back to Nashville. Folks. Natishafornashville.org, we will raise the money.
We have to raise at least $2 million to help take this city back. Natishafornashville.org. Hit that donate button. Donors, PACs, I’m coming for you. We love your prayers, but, Michael, we need your cash.
Leahy: (Chuckles) Love your prayers but need your cash.
Brooks: Need your cash.
Leahy: This is why people love Natisha. Just right to the point.
Brooks: We need your cash.
Leahy: And you think you can raise $2 million? It’s a long order. Color me a little skeptical on the ability to raise $2 million from scratch.
Brooks: Catholics, Methodists, we believe. We’ve got faith. We’re going to raise it. I need you to hit Natishafornashville.org. I need your cash. We need your cash. We got to get out there, get ahead. By the way, some of you will wake up Monday morning and see signs all over Nashville. Ms. Brooks is already ready to put at least $100,000 of my own money into the race.
Leahy: Now, let me ask the next question. You know, there’s this little deal out there where I’ve talked about it, and I think it’s a terrible deal. It’s where the Tennessee Titans have basically stuck their hand out and said, Tennessee state taxpayers give us some money.
And the state of Tennessee inexplicably is giving them half a billion dollars. And then Metro Nashville is doing all sorts of things to leverage their special taxes and privileges that have been given to them by the state legislature to use that for bonding to raise another $750 million.
And then the NFL supposedly is going to give $800 million. But it doesn’t look like there’s really a lot of it actually coming out of the pockets of the family that owns the Titans. It’s a $2.2 billion deal. As mayor, do you oppose or favor this stadium deal?
Brooks: Currently, right now, Michael, we oppose it, and I’m going to tell you why. One, if someone would put a concrete plan in front of Natisha of how we’re going to pay for the stadium, and that’s why you need to vote Natisha for Nashville for mayor, we’re the only ones that are going to be able to work with the Tennessee State Legislature.
I’m going to be up there, and we’re going to have to have a talk because, Michael, if you looked at the plan so far, where we are parking, Michael, with all this money? Where the stadium is going to be, where are we going to park and why do we have to pay for it?
And I tell people all this all the time. You all know I transplanted from Texas. I say, you can Texas my Tennessee and Tennessee my Texas. But, hey, I would love to sit down and talk with the owner a little bit. I know she’s got a new general manager over there, but right now the answer is no. I am not in favor of the new Titan Stadium currently, right now.
Leahy: What I would suggest is when you say, why don’t you finance it entirely Amy Adams-Strunk? We think it’s a great idea if you pay for it.
Brooks: Yes.
Leahy: Not the city citizens and the voters of Nashville, Davidson County.
Brooks: And the 40-member Metro Council. Just 30 seconds on that. I am in favor of squeezing that down.
Leahy: To 20.
Brooks: You got it!
Leahy: It’s interesting to me; it’s been framed as a sort of punishment, supposedly.
Brooks: Retaliation.
Leahy: Retaliation for not hosting the Republican National Committee convention here in 2024. To me, I mean, I’ve lived in this area for 31 years. When I first moved here, and I heard they had a 40-member Metro council, I said, how do they ever get anything done?
Brooks: Exactly. Let’s just say, Michael, we win. Can you imagine us with 40 members? I don’t want to use the word against because Natisha is going to work, but how can we work with a 40-member council? And how many conservatives do we have down there? We got Swope.
Leahy: Three or four.
Brooks: Three or four. What are we going to do, Michael?
Leahy: Okay. Speaking of what are we going to do? So you’re on the record. Your goal is to raise $2 million.
Brooks: That is correct.
Leahy: You are opposed to the stadium deal.
Brooks: Correct.
Leahy: You favor reducing the council size from 40 to 20.
Brooks: Yes.
Leahy: What are your other agenda items?
Brooks: One, the number one is we have to talk about, everyone knows this. I’m the three C’s. Christian, conservative, constitutionalist. That’s very important to me.
I need you to understand that constituents. But the very first thing I want everyone to know is I am pro-blue. We’re going to take 30 seconds to talk about Memphis. I know Chief Drake myself, personally. He’s a great guy.
Leahy: John Drake here. The police chief in Nashville.
Brooks: Yes. And he’s been here a long time.
Leahy: Long time.
Brooks: Hey, I was in a car accident the other day, Michael.
Leahy: Are you okay?
Brooks: I’m okay a little bit, but I’m not okay that it took 45 minutes for an officer to come to the scene. And just so that you know, is an off-duty officer that got out of his car to help me. We need to talk and sit down about our police. They’re not going anywhere. If we’re going to do a Titan Stadium, let’s increase our police force.
I’m strongly pro-blue. Very pro blue. So that’s one thing. The other thing I want to get something done about this homelessness. Somebody said, well, Miss Brooks, don’t go left on us. I’m not going left, folks. I’m not going left. But one thing I do have to do is have some empathy about folks being on the streets.
Because of our 34 percent tax increase, we got folks that are not one check away from the streets, they’re almost under, just under away from the streets. And just because you’re rich and you live in a $2 million home or $3 million home, I don’t believe in punishing the rich.
Hey, I support the rich. I congratulate the rich. But just because we’re rich or you’ve got money doesn’t mean you need to be taxed more. So, as always, let’s get this budget going. I’m in education.
Let’s talk about the school board. My main focus on the budget with the school board is talking about that curriculum. As you know, Governor DeSantis in Florida did away with the AP Black American History, and I know a lot of African Americans are fired up about it.
Leahy: And the reason is that the last quarter of it was basically left-wing ideology.
Brooks: That is correct.
Leahy: They’ve resubmitted it, by the way.
Brooks: That’s right.
Leahy: And apparently he’s going to prove the resubmission without the left-wing junk.
Brooks: I saw that. But we’ve got to work with education.
Leahy: The problem with education is all the mayor does is say, oh, we approve your budget.
Brooks: Exactly.
Leahy: And then they can spend whatever they want. Are you going to change that?
Brooks: We’re going to change that.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Natisha Brooks” by Natisha Brooks. Background Photo “Tennessee Capitol” by Ichabod. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – guest host Ben Cunningham welcomed Tennessee Star National Correspondent Neil McCabe to the newsmakers line to weigh in on the infrastructure spending, budget reconciliation, and the filibuster.
Cunningham: Neil McCabe, who is the Washington correspondent for Star Media and probably the most connected person in Washington, D.C., is on the line with us. Neil, good morning.
McCabe: Hey. Fantastic to be with you. I hope you had a good, long weekend.
Cunningham: We did. We did. Al Gore was in town, so it was cold. (McCabe laughs) So, unfortunately, we had a cold weekend, but I actually got in the water. I stayed in about 30 seconds, and then I got out. All right, Neil, we’re going to ask you the question of the day here. What is infrastructure? (Laughter)
McCabe: What isn’t infrastructure. (Laughter)
Henry: That’s the answer.
Cunningham: What can you tell us about the huge package? I mean, he announced this week the package where he throws everything into this thing but the kitchen sink. How is this thing going to fare? Are Republicans going to stand up at all, or are they just going to pass this thing via reconciliation and it’s going to be over quickly?
McCabe: There are a number of different Republican senators that have made their way to the White House to try to cut deals, and all of them are sort of the usual suspects that you would expect, like Mitt Romney.
But also, you know, John Cornyn, I think the person to really watch is Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia. She is a full-on Trump hater. This, of course, was after the election, and she sort of played nice with Trump during his presidency. But once the results were sort of put in stone, she has come out as a full-on Trump hater.
She’s also someone who uses Paul Ryan’s fundraiser. And I wrote about this for The Tennessee Star. She is completely linked in to this GOP resistance that’s being run by Paul Ryan. And this crowd is trying to push for an infrastructure bill. And who knows what’s even in it. Republicans are saying 900 billion. And that’s, like, their compromise.
Cunningham: Yeah, thanks a lot.
McCabe: But what’s even in it, right. The only thing we know that’s not in it is a wall on the Mexican border, which was, frankly, even throughout the campaign, that’s like, the biggest applause line Trump ever had.
And so what they’re going to do is the Biden White House needs to get this thing done. And they’ve told the Republicans that they have a week to sort of get their act together. And if they want to participate in this thing, the translation is the Biden and Democrats say we’re going to pass this.
And if you want your pork projects, if you want your swimming pools, your bridges, and all this stuff for your districts and your states. If you want all your goodies and Christmas presents put into this bill, you have to get on board now.
And they think they can pass it. They might be able to do a reconciliation, but they might not. The Senate is not lock solid. It’s a 50-50 Senate. And there are Democrats who are in trouble.
Cunningham: Has Manchin come out one way or the other on the whole budget?
McCabe: Manchin is a stoic vote for the Democrats. But what he won’t do is he will not go along with the filibuster and he may not go along with reconciliation. Now they may do reconciliation with the permission of the Parliamentarian. This reconciliation rule basically makes the budget exempt from a filibuster.
And the idea is you can’t to stop the government from being shut down by a filibuster. And so you’re only supposed to have one budget a year hence, you can use reconciliation one time. And you can only use reconciliation when it deals with taxes or something connected to the budget.
This is why sometimes a tax bill can go through with reconciliation. But we saw in 2017, you can’t do a lot. It has to be kind of revenue-neutral. And so Manchin may or may not go along with this. My feeling is that Manchin will vote with the Democrats on their bills like this one.
He will not try to disrupt the rules of the Senate. You’re looking at in Arizona, you have Sinema and Mark Kelly, who may be no votes. Obviously, Hassan in New Hampshire is looking at Chris Sununu.
And you have this specter of inflation, which was like something people were whispering about. They were whispering about it six months ago, three months ago, two months ago.
Cunningham: Now it’s real.
McCabe: Now people are saying, holy mackerel, we are going to blow up this economy with inflation. And the idea that Biden just announced another six trillion dollar bill. And people are like, whoa, guy, what are you doing?
Carmichael: Neil, let me ask you a quick question. Didn’t the COVID bill the Democrats passed, didn’t they pass that with reconciliation?
McCabe: I’m not sure if they use reconciliation.
Carmichael: Well they had to because no Republicans voted for it.
McCabe: So if they did, that was their one-off. The Parliamentarian rules that you can use reconciliation twice, then basically it’s game over. Then the filibuster is over. But the specter of inflation is becoming very, very real. And for the first time, the Republicans are getting political traction against the spending, not because of the debt, but because of this inflation.
Carmichael: Neil, let me ask a question. I’m going to make a statement, and you can correct me. I was under the impression that reconciliation could be used for taxes and spending.
But if you are going to pass another bill, for example, the ProAct or the Senate version of the HR1 that requires 60 votes, but the taxes and spending did not require 60 votes that you can pass that with a majority. Am I wrong about taxes and spending?
McCabe: No, you’re absolutely right. The reason why you have this reconciliation allows for one privileged motion a year in the Senate that is not subject to filibuster. But that’s because of the need to get the budget done.
You can’t change the voting age. You can’t regulate guns or de-regulate. You can’t do gun legislation. You can’t make Puerto Rico estate using reconciliation. If it’s connected to the budget, you can use reconciliation.
But even then, there’s not a lot you can do because you have to be relatively budget neutral or revenue-neutral, which is why the 2017 tax bill was passed with reconciliation. But it couldn’t go to the far extremes, which is why they had the House bill repealing the estate tax, and Republicans put the state or death tax back in. Specifically, Mike Rounds from South Dakota, personally put the estate tax back in.
But the excuse was that we needed to push revenue back in so we can get this bill passed. Biden’s in trouble. Let me just say. And I’ve said it over and again. Biden is in trouble and he’s losing control of the Senate, but he’s also losing control of the House.
And whatever he doesn’t get done by July 4 will not get done. We’ve already crossed Memorial Day. They know that they have between now and July 4 to get something done.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Metro Nashville’s City Council Member-at-Large Steve Glover to discuss Nashville’s budget timing and pointed out a recent Wall Street Journal article signaling Nashville’s fiscal trouble.
Leahy: In studio with us, Metro Council member at large, Steve Glover. But Scooter has a weather update for us. Lots going on out there. Scooter, Speaking of troubled weather and storms, there’s a fiscal storm going on in Nashville. It has for some time. We’re talking about that here with Steve Glover, Metro Council member at large, The Wall Street Journal pointed it out in a devastating article that is entirely counter to the way that Mayor Cooper presented the State of Metro on Thursday.
Glover: The sad part is, is the way that the State of Metro was presented. Then Friday, the joke of the way the budget was presented.
Leahy: Let’s stop and talk about it. Let’s be clear about how this works so our audience can understand. On Thursday, it was a press conference. Yackety yack.
Glover: Thursday was the State of Metro right at that point. And I’ve not known this to be the case that once the Mayor hands the budget over it’s the council’s budget.
Leahy: Got it.
Glover: And I didn’t see it handled that way number one.
Leahy: Part of the State of Metro is to present the budget. Correct?
Glover: Well, you don’t know. Not necessarily. Normally, once the State of Metro is completed, then they come in with the budget. But they waited a day and just said there wasn’t enough space. That’s malarky. Malarky. They could have adjourned upstairs, come down to the Davidson Ballroom, or whatever where desks were already set up for the Metro Council.
And they could have done a budget and a Council meeting and gone ahead and done it. They just chose not to. It’s just another way the legislative body just keeps giving up more and more power to the executive branch. And The Wall Street Journal article that you first started talking about in this segment is exactly right. And this is why we’re in the predicament we are in right now because the executive branch does whatever the heck it wants to. And the legislative branch says okay.
Leahy: Where’s my rubber stamp?
Glover: Doh dee-doh dee-doh… And they can get mad at me all they want to. I don’t care, because, you know, the thing that drives me the craziest is we are elected by the people who represent the people, and they have abdicated that to one office downstairs in the executive branch. The legislative branch, our forefathers had a great reason for the way they set up our Constitution and the way our government is supposed to work in America.
The Wall Street Journal article talking about Nashville being one of the five worst cities fiscally it should have been, and I think the article pointed it out, we should have been literally at the crest of being the best because we had every opportunity in the world.
Leahy: Nashville has everything going for it except for a very bad, reckless Metro government.
Glover: Yep. And as I said on Tucker Carlson about six months ago, whatever it was, it’s a lack of leadership. That’s our problem in Nashville. A lack of leadership. And whenever you have that kind of void, this is what happens. Oh, well, just like you’re talking about the American whatever, blah, blah, blah. They give them all these names and whatever.
They’re going to throw all kinds of money at things. And they’re not going to fix anything. And that’s been our problem. We keep throwing money, throwing money, throwing money. And we’ll talk about some of this as we go forward here on where I think we’re throwing money in all the wrong places.
Leahy: Wasting money.
Glover: In my opinion, it’s beyond wasting. And we’re not really focusing on where we need to be spending the money. The Wall Street Journal was exactly right. They come out last week and they said, oh, no, we fixed it. Everything’s golden. No, it’s not. Don’t think it is. And I’m not saying the sky is falling, the sky is falling. I’m saying that it’s raining pretty hard outside and you better get a frigging umbrella.
Leahy: And it’s mostly it’s largely these unfunded health care liabilities for retirees.
Glover: Well, the op-ed. So what they’ll talk about on that is that they fixed that and they’ve removed one point one billion dollars off of the financial sheets because they’re going to shift everything to this Medicare advantage thing. So we’re going to move it from the local government to the federal government. Yeah, that will fix it.
Leahy: That’s a joke.
Glover: So way to go, Metro. Oh, my gosh. You guys are just tremendous.
Leahy: This is very much how Liberal Democrats pretend two ‘solve problems.’ They just move the accounting for it from one side to another side or try to.
Glover: Let’s make sure we give credit do where it’s supposed to all be given. Don’t forget now and I think it was last hour or whatever you were talking about the George W. Bush thing.
Leahy: Oh, yeah.
Glover: He’s the one who did the Medicare Part D. And Clinton gave us Medicare Part C, which is Medicare Advantage. And then George W. gave us Medicare Part D, which is prescription drugs and has been a fiasco ever since. And so what we’re doing in Metro, apparently and I haven’t read the whole thing so it’s hard for me to tell you exactly what it looks like right now.
If you’re 65 plus, you have to go on Medicare Advantage. That means now you will have to take Medicare Part B, which is 136 or 140 or whatever it is a month that you’ll be required to pay. And so what my question is, well, okay, if you’re doing that and how much are you still going to have to pay off the insurance? I know people grind the axe on the Council members, but you got to talk about the retirees. We’re talking about folks who gave years about years upon years upon years of service.
Leahy: And there’s unfunded healthcare liability for those retirees.
Glover: Yes. And there is across the entire country. It’s not anything unique only to Metro.
Leahy: It’s just worse here apparently.
Glover: It is.
Leahy: Like, by a lot.
Glover: Well, it’s because we like to buy new, shiny toys every Christmas, as opposed to buying one toy every Christmas and making sure the toys we bought in the previous Christmases are kept operational, functional, and serving the purpose.
Leahy: This budget document you’re talking about that was not presented along with the State of Metro address, but was delivered separately.
Glover: Friday. It always is. That’s the way the bill is always filed on Friday.
Leahy: So it was delivered on Friday. And this is for what budget period?
Glover: Well, it will be for the FY ’22.
Leahy: And when does that begin?
Glover: July one.
Leahy: July one of this coming year?
Glover: Yes. July 21 of 2021.
Leahy: Until June 30th of 2022.
Glover: Correct.
Leahy: Now, how many pages is this budget?
Glover: I don’t know the number on the orders.
Leahy: A lot?
Glover: You got to look at the budget book. The ordinance only spells out the legalities.
Leahy: The budget then.
Glover: The budget book typically is about 1,000 pages.
Leahy: Are you going to read every page of that?
Glover: Pretty much.
Leahy: You’re kidding me?
Glover: No.
Leahy: That’s a lot of work.
Glover: I always do that. That’s what I do.
Leahy: You always do it. How many Metro Council members read the 1,000-page budget book?
Glover: I don’t know. I mean, you could ask each one of them. They could tell you whatever.
Leahy: So after the Mayor submits the budget, it goes to a committee in Metro?
Glover: It goes to the whole Council. The Budget and Finance Committee, which I’m a member of, we will take it, and we pretty much so do what’s going to be the hearings. But what I found most interesting is this year our chair, and look, she’s a nice person. Nothing personal here. It’s just the fact that only going to be one substitute. You can do amendments, blah, blah. Once again, we’re abdicating our responsibilities.
Leahy: So let me ask you this. The Budget and Finance Committee of Metro is very important. And you’re a Metro Council Member-At-Large.
Glover: Correct. I represent the whole city.
Leahy: But you’re not the chair of the committee.
Glover: No, I’ll never be the chair. If I was the chair, we’d start fixing things.
Leahy: You’re not the chair of the committee because…
Glover: I’m a Republican.
Leahy: Who picks the chair, the vice Mayor, the Vice Mayor. And how many people are on the committee?
Glover: I think there’s 13, 14, 15 of us.
Leahy: Wow, that’s a big committee.
Glover: That’s a huge committee.
Leahy: I think you’re having a meeting today?
Glover: Yes. At four o’clock. Four or four-thirty. Something like that.
Leahy: Tell us what is going to happen in that meeting.
Glover: Well, you’ll go through this week’s agenda and that’s what we’ll talk about. But we’re going to be convening this coming Thursday to talk about the budget. So here we are one week later, and we’re gonna start talking about the budget. We won’t be talking about it today or tomorrow. We’re going to wait until Thursday because no need to talk about something that’s kind of spinning out of control.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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