Welcome to the party pal. Thumb, thumb, Michael. And the entitlement is astounding to me. What more could you want from a low-budget radio program? This is a dumpster fire. I'm just me asking. Time to get a new perspective. We know just what you need, and we've got just the cure. Open wide. for steaming hot cup of freedom. The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live.
across the world. Oh yeah, live around the world on the internet at michaeldukeshow.com and across the state of Alaska on this, your favorite radio station. and or fm translator good morning my friends welcome to the program it is hour two of the big hour one of the big radio show for Wednesday. Hump day. I'm confused. What day is it? It's crazy. It's, uh... Just another beautiful day in paradise. Another red sky in the morning. Oh man, beautiful, beautiful day today.
down in the cosmic hamlet by the sea of homer and we are loving it i'm gonna say i spent all morning yesterday well all midday Sitting out in the sun and broadcasting live yesterday down at Ketchamack Auto Parts in Homer, and wow, what a... It was so good. Just so good. I got a great chance to meet a lot of listeners and say hi, and it was...
it was fantastic it was rejuvenating rejuvenating so it was good stuff um but today we're gonna uh we're gonna get down into it we're joined this morning by former representative and now statewide podcast host Ben Carpenter, who's going to come in and talk with us about the fiscal situation.
here in Alaska. Now, Ben's got a unique... perspective on this because he was part of the fiscal policy working group that went over the whole state's fiscal situation in 2021 and came up with a workable plan. uh it was a tough fight and we'll get into that with ben but then um he immediately got riddled full of bullets when it came out i mean when they when they tried to implement it just nothing nothing happened nothing it was like
Pulling toenails the whole time. And eventually was voted out over what I would consider to be a misrepresentation of what his position was. on taxes and some other things here but we're going to get into all that but in light of what's going on the governor calling now for you know he's got the freeze on and now he's calling for a new I guess a new fiscal policy working group to be called.
after this session and everything else. I thought it would be pertinent and relevant to bring Ben onto the program to discuss it. so let's jump over here and we will get into it with him here this morning Uh, Ben Carpenter joins us, uh, from his, uh, his, his undisclosed secret location is beautiful. Look at that. That's a beautiful, he's getting all studioed up and everything. He's got lighting and I love it.
He joins us this morning for a conversation on this. Good morning, Ben. How are you doing? Good morning, Michael. Good to be with you. Yeah, it is good to have you on. And so first and foremost, I got to know, how's the show going, the podcast? You've taken over the Must Read Alaska podcast, and that sounds huge, so tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, I did take over here a couple months ago and I'm excited about it. It gives us an opportunity to continue to.
share the message of fiscal responsibility and other things all things alaska my bent is going to be on my uh my experience in the legislature and and the challenges of the state and i think that's that's um where we need to have the conversation still but um yeah i'm excited i'm i'm having fun doing it it's um not something that i ever saw myself doing um But I am excited that I get the opportunity to do that.
Well, I'm so excited for you, and I'm happy, and I know that you and I were destined to do some more matchups and some more collaborative stuff here in the future, and I'm looking forward to that as well. And so I'm happy to see you doing something and still having an impact and effect on the state. Ben, these last couple of days, this last week or so, must have been a lot of deja vu for you. I mean, because this just seems like Groundhog Day all over again. Didn't we just do this?
Didn't just, I mean, you know, here's what was astonishing to me and I'll let you, I don't want to bloviate here, but what's astonishing to me is that everybody, including the governor is. Shocked. Shocked, I tell you, that we're actually out of money. And now we've just seemed to have discovered that for everyone from Lyman Hoffman on down from the beginning of the session. And now the governor comes in at the last 11th hour, 11 days before the end of the session.
Just throws out the hiring freeze. Because, my God, all of a sudden we're on a... And then... asks for a fiscal working group or a committee or whatever to basically do the work that you and the other members of the fiscal policy working group in 2021 did. It just seems like, I don't know if it's tone deafness, I don't know if it's just this is politics or what, but it just seems like this is a whole do-over of what we've done in the past.
Well, you know what, if the fiscal policy working group reconvenes itself, it should be quick work. Like, we've got something to start with, and I can't imagine that they're going to come up with anything that's significantly different than what we did. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. And I don't want to harp on it too much, but this group that came together in 2021... was the most This separate group of dichotomous group of people that you could come up with.
On the left, on the right, the big government, the small government, Republicans, Democrats, House and Senate. And, I mean, you guys worked the hell out of that. And nobody was happy at the end.
which is the hallmark of a great compromise, is that nobody is completely happy at the end. But in the end, everybody unanimously voted and said, this is what we need to do. And the highlight of that was, that it needed to be a holistic approach of taking everything that you couldn't do, just one thing in isolation.
which of course has been what the legislature has been trying to do for years, taking one piece and hurting the dividend or doing this. And I just don't know how it would be any different. You mean one piece like HB57 and Senegal 113? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Let's take a crack at one little tiny piece. Let's do this. Let's not address. Let's remember. Well, I mean, you were still there, right? When Gary Stevens says that their fiscal plan.
was the 75-25. That was their fiscal plan when they were asked about what fiscal, you know, Ben Carpenter's got a fiscal plan in the house. What's your fiscal plan? How did that work out? Yeah. My last session, my last budget conversation, I said, I predicted that this coming year that we're talking about now, the budget would be about a 12% dividend.
and i was off by a couple percentage points but we're somewhere around an 18 dividend and i also said that the following year next year's budget would be a darn near zero dividend
The numbers don't lie. If you don't have either reductions in spending or additional revenue, that's where you're going like if you're going to continue to grow the government and grow spending then that's it's the only place you can go yeah and i it's interesting if you step back and look at it for some perspective the rest of the states went through a recession you know a decade ago and in 2016 time frame alaska really saw a downturn because of the oil prices dropping
We're still dealing with that, right? The $16 billion that we had in our savings account allowed us to kick the can down the road on dealing with that structural imbalance, the size of government versus the amount of revenue coming from private sector sources, from the traditional private sector sources. taxes, for example. Wisconsin's Scott Walker had to deal with that. He had a $3.5 billion budget deficit that they had to overcome.
And they chose to overcome it because they didn't have any other options. They didn't have the savings account that we could just dip into. And that's what our CBR was. That's what our permanent fund is doing for us right now. It's allowing us to not address the big problem, which is a lack of structure and a lack of uh revenue measures like um I don't know how to describe it other than you've got to find a balanced approach to funding your government from your private sector economy.
We're not choosing to do that, a balanced approach where we got all our eggs in one basket and oil, and now we got all our eggs in one basket with permanent fund earnings. The private sector economy is an afterthought. Well, it isn't for other states.
It's their sole source of revenue. They have to pay attention to what's going on with the private economy because that's where they draw their revenue from. Here in the state, we've been able to bypass that. And like you said, having the SBR, the CBR, the permanent fund dividend, the earnings reserve, it has allowed them to ignore the reality of you can't keep spending more than you're taking in and expect that it's going to last forever.
that's right and and the legislature i think some folks see that hence why they uh proposed constitutional amendment that the people would have to vote on right so it's not something that's going to be easily done but a constitutional amendment that would allow the legislature to spend from the corpus of the fund
of the permanent fund right hey let's put in the statute or in the constitution that we can't spend any more than five percent and that'll that'll be a spending limit we won't be able to spend any more than that And that means we won't be able to spend down the corpus. Well, that's a lie in certain circumstances. Sure. They fully know that too. Yeah. If you do not have investment earnings that exceed your draw for any given year, then drawing that amount would come from part of the corpus.
So, for example, if your investment returns are not 5% that year, then whatever the delta is, is coming out of the corpus. We've already had the legislative finance director on record in how state affairs say, look, if it doesn't matter what the fund is, if you draw down the fund balance in lean years or years where you don't have investment earnings that keep up with that draw, then your
hurting the long term health of that fund. That's exactly what we're setting ourselves up to do with the state of Alaska. So I just.
voters with this next election cycle it is super critical that we get somebody in office that is not tied to union interests and keeping things going the way that they are it is super important that we get somebody in there with a private sector focus that we're able to recognize that we need our state government we need our legislature and we need the state government to be
to care about a private sector economy and how do you make that happen how do you how do you shift what's currently going on in in juno to care about what where our jobs are. Because relying on the permanent fund to fund our state government
That doesn't do anything for jobs in the state of Alaska. Not private sector jobs. And in fact, it has the opposite effect because as you draw more and more money, out of the private economy, because studies have shown that the money from the permanent fund has been a boon to entrepreneurship and other things, things that create jobs.
And it doesn't just buy big screen TVs and trips to Hawaii. People pool their money. They use it. They pull it together. They create businesses. They hire employees. They do all those things. And it is a huge thing for folks to see. And that's what we're missing in this whole thing. Ben Carpenter is our guest. He is a former rep and now podcast host for the Must Read Alaska podcast. We're going to continue with him here in just a moment. Don't go anywhere. The Michael Duke Show continues.
We'll be back and we're going to dive down into what he's talking about here. That connection, that connectivity, because that's critical. but it is going to entail some pain for everybody like we talked about you know the art of compromise and the hallmark of it is nobody's happy in the whole, you know.
in the whole scheme of things and we're going to talk about that with ben carpenter here in just a second the michael duke show common sense liberty based free thinking radio back with ben carpenter in just a moment If you missed the show, you can listen to it on your time with Duke's On Demand. Oh, and it's free. Like America used to be. Streaming live every weekly morning on Facebook Live and... DukeShow.com.
All right. Welcome back to the program. I got that fixed there, Ben. Sorry about that. I think last time Ben was on, he was still running for re-election when he was on the interview there. But yeah, we've got your scored away. You know, this is the thing, Ben. This just, again, I mentioned Groundhog Day earlier. I mentioned that the other day and somebody said,
That movie just stresses me out, man. Well, try living it, right? I mean, we're not watching a movie watching Bill Murray, you know, kill himself 53 different times. we're we're living this it's the same thing over and over and they just like it's gonna work it's gonna work and and you talked about you know, the percentages and the dividends. And, you know, just looking at it right now, they drew down to, what, it's 80 to 83% of the earnings is what the state's going to take.
leaving us with 16 or 17% left. But they're already warning us, oh, that next year is going to be so much worse. So much worse. Well, there's only about $440 million left of what they're taking right from the permanent fund when it's all said and done. And if we're talking about a billion-dollar deficit next year, Plus, potentially upwards of $1.5 billion, depending on what all the bills end up at and how the employee contracts work out and everything else.
It could be gone next year. I mean, that'd just be nothing. I already said it. I said yesterday, you'd be lucky to get less than a $500. Yeah. I just said, you'd be lucky next year. I said, I put it on record. My prediction is we will get less than a $500 dividend next year if we have a dividend.
now there's blood in the water the sharks are circling they're coming in for the kill and uh this is the only source of revenue that we have to that hasn't been spent yet You can think of a tax that isn't there yet, like a corporate, sorry, income tax or sales tax for residents.
You can think of that as a source of revenue that hasn't been spent yet because we don't have it. It hasn't been implemented. The only source of revenue that we have that hasn't been implemented to pay for state government is the permanent fund earnings right now.
That's the portion of the permanent fund earnings that goes towards the dividend. So the dividend specifically. We keep taking little portions of it, but there's still this little chunk there that the powers that be. And I see this as a... as a organized labor push. to get their portion of the permanent fund dividend before it's gone. Right. That's why they pushed over this bill here at the last minute in the House on the defined benefits and everything else.
Even though they have no true fiscal note, they have no real, you know, they keep making arguments about how it'll save you money and everything else. And the Reason Foundation has made several presentations that have all said, probably not. It could be upwards of $30 billion a year because they're using these really rosy actuarial data, which is what got us in trouble the first time around, by the way. That's exactly it. And there's no doubt in my mind.
that going to a defined benefits system means the state is on the hook and worsens the state financial future, fiscal future. Why would they care? The state's the one that's going to have to figure that out. They've got a permanent fund. The courts, in the end, if we're having a situation where we're having a liquidity situation, the courts will just say, hey, legislature, figure it out.
You've got $80 or $100 billion in a permanent fund. Yeah. What's the problem here? You've got plenty of money to make those pension systems solvent. Yeah. You can't go bankrupt. You can't cry poor mouth when you've got this $80 billion fund there. Sorry. You're on the hook for it. One of them is that you can't spend out of the corpus of the fund. And the other one is you can't allow the the or you can't diminish the return.
employee's retirement system, right? You can't diminish that. So which one of those two has to get? Yeah. No, it's crazy at this point. Ben Carpenter is our guest. We're about to rejoin here, and we're going to continue this. The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense, Liberty-Based, Free Thinking Radio. No, Harold, he did not say that there was no giveaway. Part of the Fiscal Policy Working Group plan includes new taxes on oil.
Their ignorance is amazing at this point to say things like that. Just go read it. Here we go. Please like, share, subscribe, bring the bell. Let's do this thing. Here we go. Public enema number one. Oh, wait, sorry. Enemy. Public enemy number one, which makes more sense. On the other hand, he's a little bit of a pain in the Michael Duke show. Yep, that's me. Welcome back to the program. Former rep and now podcast host for the Must Read Alaska podcast host, Ben Carpenter, joins us this morning.
to discuss the fiscal situation here in the state. And, you know, Ben, you said it earlier, this is a reckoning. We are rapidly approaching the point of a reckoning. In the teens, we drained. First the SBR, then the CBR, the statutory budget reserve, the constitutional budget reserve. We burned through $17 billion or so, kicking the can down the road, basically avoiding. It's all about avoidance.
avoiding the fact that we are living beyond our means and we need to do it. Then we continued to do it in 2017 by the vetoing of the PFD and then since then the continual taking of a portion. of the dividend from the earnings that the state gets. But now we're rapidly approaching that point where there is no more room. There's no more wiggle room. We're up against, we're in a corner. We're in the round corner now.
where you might get one more bite at the dividend Apple this next year, but there's barely enough in the CBR. They've got enough for cash flow and maybe a billion and a half more, but that's it. And then they're out of room. And so this has been all about avoidance. And nobody wants to take responsibility for any of this. And that's why they've avoided, in my opinion, watching you fight and struggle on the floor.
to try and bring in, what did Rob Myers say here a few minutes ago? He said it perfectly. Of the fiscal policy working group, he said the work that was left was to move from a framework to agreement on specific bills that was it they'd agreed they already had the framework that's what you guys said out there here's the plan here's the policies now all we need to do is put it in specific bills and move it forward
and they all fled from that because everybody wanted to avoid being the heroes that can deliver the pork and the projects and the money and the programs to their districts. They don't want to be the adult in the room that says, sorry kids we can't afford the ice cream at the store this month we got to move you know and so it's all about avoidance at this point and um i mean this this bill is about to come due
last session we had I brought forward some some bills and representative staff brought forward a bill and a resolution that pretty much was the majority of the fiscal policy working group recommendations. He brought forward a statutory change and a constitutional change to our spending limit. I brought forward some recommendations for cutting the budget, namely in the unfilled vacancies, was somewhere $400 million, something like that?
which is about where the fiscal policy working group said the tolerance was for reducing spending. And then I brought forward a broad-based sales tax, 2%, very modest. sales tax for Alaska and fixing the PFD problem, which was fixing the statute to pay a 50-50 PFD. So all of the components for the fiscal policy working group, the 2021 fiscal policy working group, were in play last year.
They're all created. And for the next legislature, or this one, you can just go online and bring them up onto your computer and dust them off. You don't need to have another fiscal policy working group. You got all of the levers that you need to pull to solve that problem. already created.
right you just don't have the will to actually do it right you know one of the things that i heard you know well there's just there's so many bills how do we how do we make that happen it's it's just not well we're doing it this session like we you've got a
cell phone bill that gets language put in it I'm sorry a cell phone in schools bill that gets language put in it that ties funding increases for education grant to attacks that doesn't exist yet that you're going to put in place in another bell. We're tying two bills together. So that would be like tying a spending cap bill with a sales tax bill. Right. Right. if we're going to raise revenue then let's implement an effective spending cap
Right. Let's tie those two together. So if one passes and the other doesn't, the whole thing fails. that's exactly what's going to happen with your hb 57 if you don't pass 113 You're not going to have any money to do what you just said. You wanted to do it in 57.
We're doing exactly what needs to be done. We just don't have the will to address the root problem, which is the structural imbalance. Right. Well, and I think, you know, this is this. Now that you're out of the legislature and can kind of, you know, you're not. held back by i don't know we call it decorum or whatever but you know this is always my been my heartburn with everything that was happening as you were trying to push this stuff forward is that
It seemed like every time we turned around, somebody was complaining about, well, you can't do that because of the single subject rule. Oh, you can't do that single subject rule. And yet we see when they want something to be put together. they're more than happy to, oh, of course it's all one single subject. You know, I would say that a fiscal policy bill, an omnibus fiscal policy bill,
would kind of cover all of that. If you said, here's the bill and here are the components of it and here's what it all does It's a single subject. It all has to do with fiscal policy. And whether you have to tie other bills into it or whatever, it all falls under the idea of we're creating a fiscal plan for the state. But you nailed it. The fact is, nobody wants to be the bad guy. Nobody wants to take responsibility for that. Like I said, they just want to be the heroes.
Nobody wants to lead. Yeah, nobody wants to lead. Exactly. Well, and that actually brings me back to something else. I don't know. Last week, we dissected the Senate press conference, the Senate majority press conference, and I just found it. ironic and irritating that at one point The finance co-chair, Bert Stedman.
First of all, he said they went on and on about how next year is going to be even worse. And one of the questions from the reporters dealt with that. And then his comment was, well, I don't want Alaskans to focus on that. for the coming years. I want them to focus on this year. And I'm just like,
You cannot put blinders on and say, only focus on this year. This is an ongoing problem, first of all. And then he had the gall to say, what I'd really like to see done is have the governor actually put a plan together instead of us instead of us a status quo budget i'd like to see him cut and put it all and tell us what and i'm like You were here in 2019. You were one of the voices that said it was the apocalypse because he did that in 2019.
It's just so disingenuous that these people, they don't want to lead. And when somebody does try to lead, they riddle them full of bullet holes. And now here we are. Yeah, we have a problem in the legislature and in our state government in general. Few people want to lead and fewer want to follow. And it is just a... Anarchy. It's organized chaos. I don't know. After six years in the legislature, I... I can see where some improvements need to be made with regard to bills and things like that.
But the largest piece that I think that needs improvement is the folks that electorates send. to Juno. You've got to start drafting people who do not want to go and who are not going to make this career for themselves. They're going to go down there to solve the problem, and they'll get it solved.
in short order and come home and go back to doing what they were doing. They're incentivized to not drag this out, not kick the can down the road. You're not likely to find that from people who are raising their hand and saying, hey, send me, I want to do this. I want to... It's likely to come from your business leaders who are successfully doing something else.
and they really can't afford to take the time off to go down to Juneau, those are the people that you want. That's who you have to send down there. They're like, you know what, I'm doing this. for a short period of time right and then i'm getting out of there and back to my my real life yeah because yeah because it's not the best that i knew yeah because instead right now what we're faced with people who have been there 40.
30, 36, 28, one of them, 25. These people who've been there for two or three decades who are part of the problem. And I agree with you that we need to change those players. The problem... is The people in their district seem to be just fat, dumb, and happy. Like I said, they just keep sending these people back. And I think that goes back to what I was saying, that these guys are the heroes that keep bringing home the bacon or doing whatever. I don't know.
I mean, how do we fix it, Ben? How do we fix that? Because you're right. I think that is the solution. But what we did is we changed out a huge portion of the legislature over the last six, seven, eight years. huge portion obviously we didn't send the right people yeah i mean that's that's critically important nice people nice people right
not the right ones because we haven't fixed the problem. And I think the train is going to have to run off the tracks before we are forced to do something that we don't want to do. Whether it's a lack of vision or lack of foresight or lack of belief that, you know, this is... It really is going to happen. The choice right now is do you want a PFD in a tax or do you want no PFD in a tax? Yeah.
That's the choice that you have. So if you don't make a choice and you just kick your can down the road, you're going to have no PFD and you're going to have a tag. Well, and that's what's going to happen. That's a good segue because during your election cycle, your opponent, again, out of context, took your support for this broad-based 2% tax.
and just walloped you with it, right? Now, you were very clear that you were not going to support any tax that wasn't part of an overall fiscal plan that didn't include cuts. that didn't include a statute, a spending cap, you know, didn't protect the dividend. I mean, all the things that we, you know, more oil taxes, you said all that. I wouldn't support it.
alone but with all these other things i can support it and of course they took it out of context and lambasted you but you just nailed it the bottom line is do you the the dichotomy of do you want a pfd or attacks is going to be do you want a pfd And attacks. Or no PFD and attacks. And we're already seeing it. Andy Josephson at a press conference a few weeks ago said this. But we don't yet live in a world where the Alaska people...
are ready for themselves to invest in their state government. I mean, that's a soft way of saying we're not quite ready yet for people to, you know, now it's time for you to pay your fair share. They're already saying the quiet part out loud. That's what they're looking for. They're going to raid the PFD, drain it down.
attempt to attach the corpus and the earnings reserve so they can tap that. But if they can't, they've already got plan B in their pocket. They're going to start going out and taxing Alaskans. So it's not a question of if. It's just a question of is it this year? Is it next year? Is it the following year? And what are they taxing Alaskans for? It is a continuation of
state government at the levels of spending and the structure that we have. When I say structure, I say the recent 2025 salary study. that was conducted here by the administration said our our vacancy and recruitment um we have a 16 vacancy rate which is approximately 3 000 unfilled positions That's 3,000 unfilled positions that are appropriated money every year.
And that money does not lapse at the end of the year because it wasn't spent. It's spent one way or the other. So we're going to continue doing that and we're going to raise taxes to continue doing that. The salary study said of the 36 job classes that studied, 72% have salaries at or above the market median. So we've got some positions that need to be probably adjusted a little bit, but the vast majority of our state positions are competitive in the marketplace.
We're going to continue this system without a dividend and with more taxes. That's what's winning in the state of Alaska. The private sector is going to continue to bleed money either from the permanent fund itself. the earnings distribution or through some sort of tax. That's what's going to continue the state government system.
unless you do something different. And right now we're looking at the dividend having one or two years left, maybe three, but I would imagine the pressure is going to be so great next legislature that the dividend's gone. You don't get it back. You don't have a conversation that says, hey, we're going to pay an income tax or a sales tax in order to pay a dividend. That's not going to happen.
so once it's gone it's gone completely and then we're like every other state that says uh hey we're gonna have to raise a tax for look at this look at this spending look at this government system that's uh too expensive to fail We have to keep going. In 2023, the number per capita spend in the state government. was right around $20,000 for every man, woman, and child in the state.
in 2023, which is an updated number because it used to be closer to $15,500, somewhere in there. But it's gone up, obviously, as the budget's gone up. So now we're spending $20,000 for every man, woman, and child. And the question that I ask people is, How many people live in your home? Multiply that times 20,000 and tell me.
You know, mom and dad and two kids. Are you getting your $80,000? What are you getting for your $80,000 a year that they're spending on you? Do you feel like you're getting $80,000 in services? If you're a government employee, you're getting security. If you're in the private sector, you've got risk. Ben Carpenter is our guest. We're coming up on the break. We're going to be back with more here. Just a moment. Don't go anywhere. We're gonna continue here with Ben.
You can find him at the Must Read Alaska. Ben, how do we get the podcast? Is it on our website? Yeah, it's linked on mustreadalaska.com, and it's also on YouTube. You just search Must Read Alaska Show. Okay. All right, we're going to continue on in just a moment. The Michael Duke Show, common sense, liberty-based, free-thicket radio. Listened to by more staffers in Juneau than any other show.
Because their bosses told them to. And after what they just heard, oh man, they're gonna be best. You're a bad, bad man. The Michael Duke Show. Okay, Ben Carpenter continues with us here in the break. That's the hard thing that I think people don't... I mean, that's the fear factor, right? Well, do you want to pay a tax to get a dividend? And it's such a false argument because...
At the rate they're going now, there won't be a dividend anyway. And then inevitably, just based on the numbers that we're seeing, there's going to be a tax. And people just don't seem to, even folks that I agree with almost everything else, but feel like, oh, I could give up my dividend instead of paying a tax. And my argument, I look at him and I go, you realize that.
That's not an either or, right? It's going to be both. You're going to give up your dividend and maybe it's a year, maybe it's two years, maybe it's four years. Then you will have a tax on top of that. It's coming. It's inevitable. My oldest grandchild is six years old. By the time she's driving, she will have never known a dividend and she will have some sort of state income tax or state sales tax that she's going to pay.
that's what she will know. And she will not have had the benefit of these next 10 years of being able to put away a PFD in savings to pay for school, for example. She won't have that benefit. Whatever we did in the past for our kids, because of the blessings of the permanent fund. now those blessings are going to be bestowed upon us by government, government services of some sort. And that's the only way that we get to express our constitutional ownership of the resources in the state.
I think it's a very socialist idea. I don't like it, but that's the world that we live in. We're going to choose So the people we send out and down to Juneau, we're going to choose to express the ownership of our natural resources. solely through what government services can provide to us to take care of us. rapidly approaching the end of where we as individuals get to benefit directly from the ownership of those resources.
Yeah, I mean, it's coming, and yet everybody seems, again, it's avoidance at this point. and even the electorate is suffering from that. You know, again, sure, take my PFD, just don't tax me. It's inevitable that it's happening, and all you're doing is delaying the inevitable, and at the same time, doing irreparable damage. to the private sector.
in the meanwhile, because you've taken out all that money out of the private sector where it can't grow. So when they do go to tax it, you're going to have a sickly private sector that you're going to try and tax. And that means that your tax burden will be even greater, which will cause Other ripple effects, right? Out-migration, people finally throwing their hands up and leaving, and people not being willing to invest in businesses and things like that. I mean, the ripple effects are huge.
Yep. You've got a question, right? Am I better off, and is the private economy better off with a dividend or without a dividend? okay well the private economy is better off with that money coming in being spent in the private economy is the private economy better off without a tax or with attack well it's better off without attack
And both of those situations are coming. That is the, unless we change course drastically now, both of those cases, the worst case scenarios are going to happen. The dividend will not be there and you will end up with another tax. That is the... It must happen. There's not a choice that we're going to have. It must happen.
You don't have the people, you aren't sending the people down there to choose a different option. That's just financially what's going to happen. You're going to pay a tax. And that challenges, I mean, just look at the conversation.
what's going on now we're going to implement measures that require others other corporate interests who are not currently paying a tax in the state of alaska or to the state of alaska to now pay a tax to the state of alaska but we're going to sell it and say well this isn't really going to hurt anybody it's not going to raise prices or have any negative impact it's just somebody from out of state that's paying but they're not paying now and it'll be okay
Complete bonkers. These are the same morons that say we should just raise a property tax. Don't worry, the landlords will pay it. They won't pass that on to you, the renters. I mean, they'll just eat it. Don't worry about it. It'll be fine. Any excuse will do. Right. No, it's crazy. And as long as their part of the economy is taken care of and covered, the economy is great.
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing you have to realize is everything that's being done right now is to prop up our state government culture. employees and those who are Seeking comfort from state government through financial means. We're propping that up and that portion of our society with the policies that are coming forward. Ben Carpenter is our guest. We're about to rejoin the radio. If you haven't liked this or shared it,
Please do so. Only 19 of you out of 65 or 70 have liked it. Please like the show. Please do it. Let's continue on. Here we go. The Michael Duke Show. The Michael Duke Show. Not your daddy. I'm scared for a second. Alright, Ben Carpenter is our guest. We're continuing on here. Ben, we like to talk a little bit about the solutions. Now, Alaska has a unique form of governance in the fact that the governor of the state of Alaska is probably the strongest executive in the country.
They have more power, more direct control than almost any other governor in the nation. And so my question to you is, does it, you know, because at this point, I'm kind of at wit's end. I've been talking about the same stuff for 25 years. You've been talking about it. You worked in the legislature for six years. You've been talking about it and thinking about it. For longer than that. But I think at some point...
You know, you've got to ask the question, okay, what we're doing is not working. How do we fix it? Does it, is it a strong governor that has to happen? You know, now we've got, we've got ClickBish. And we've got Nancy Dahlstrom, both of them, who are totally unexciting to anybody who has any kind of fiscal constraints.
And then we've got now Bernadette Wilson, who's announced that she is running for governor, which on paper, she looks good. But the question is, is it going to take a strong governor? to drive the boat or will like in 2019 when governor dunley put forward the plan with donna arduin that immediately got him pounded into the pavement.
Is that what they can expect? Or could a governor with a strength to stay the course, to face the potential for recall, to only be a one-term governor, could that fix the problem in your mind with the current makeup that we have now in the legislature? Um... If the legislature was forced to act through not having any other choices, just removing choices from them, then they're capable of pushing the green button on some choice that...
But that really isn't a choice and it's a change in our fiscal structure. But barring a forcing of that, there doesn't appear to be the leadership to do something before the train runs off the track. So, no, I don't think so. I agree with you that the chief executive of the state government has quite a bit of power. I don't know how much that can be expressed. and continuing the job. And the reason that I say that is because I think that whoever is going to win
The seat to win the job is somebody who the organized labor in the state wants to see in that seat at this point. It's that strong of influence. within the electorate of the state of Alaska. I don't know. I don't know that there's a way that we fix this without running the train off the track. I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but it really has to boil down to people elect both private and public workers and non-public workers and non-union workers in the private sector.
understanding the serious nature of the state's fiscal problems where we've been arguing and talking about hey we've got this fiscal deficit Well, the deficit really only exists because there's this dividend that needs to be paid. If you're considering just for a second the concept of the amount of money sitting there in a dividend, a permanent funder needs to be paid for the dividend as money that arrived in some other form like a tax. Let's call it an income tax.
If that hundreds of millions of dollars was actually meant to derive from an income tax, then we wouldn't be having a conversation about a deficit because the revenue would be there. And then we would just have a conversation about how it gets spent. There's no deficit. The deficit is because we have statutes to say and policies that have been decided that this is important for our people in Alaska to pay this bill to the people of Alaska, which is their dividend.
You take that away and the budget is balanced. There's enough revenue to pay for the expenses. But we're rapidly approaching a time where the cost of government is going to exceed that which is available to us out of the permanent fund earning.
and that is a true deficit that is a true deficit we will not have any other money any other sources because we don't have any in our sbr we don't have enough in our cbr and you want to tap into the corpus of the permanent fund so what i'm what i'm trying to to say is All Alaskans need to understand that the trajectory we are on is sending us to a real deficit where the legislature will have no choice but to implement taxes on somebody. It will be on oil. It will be on people.
Oil companies. And it'll be on people. One of the two is what is going to happen. Because we're unwilling to make any structural changes now. Right. That is what happened. And we will end up with a structural deficit. an imbalance, a lack of money to pay for what we think we want, just like every other state has had. You can check in the last. You can go look at what happened in Wisconsin. You can look at Michigan with Governor Rick Snyder. You can look at Indiana with Mitch Daniels.
strong, strong deficits. strong organized labor influence in the state. legislatures, legislators that don't work well together with each other and they had to find a way to balance the budget and structurally fix their problem. We're rapidly approaching that and we will not have the benefit. savings accounts to save us. I don't know. I think that that's what's going to have to happen.
in order to fix this situation. And unfortunately, it's the future generations of Alaskans that are going to pay. They're the ones that are going to be hurt the worst because we've spent all their money. And I agree. I mean, we've been toying with the idea around here of just saying, well, maybe we should just... embrace the suck and just you know okay you're gonna spend go ahead and spend and just accelerate the curve so that at least something is left over
that we could maybe pick up the pieces with. If we accelerate the problem, accelerate the crash, maybe we could get it done before we drain every account down to nearly nothing. Because once you start eating that seed corn, once you start eating into the permanent fund itself and zero out the earnings reserve or combine them or do whatever, and then it's just diminishing returns, and then all you've done is
exacerbated the situation and you've given us this big long tail landing instead of an immediate crash. Maybe we need the immediate crash to wake people up. Yeah, I... I mean... Like I said, I don't want to be the Debbie Downer here, but the same people who are saying, hey, we need to tap into the permanent fund earnings to prop up government.
That political entity as a group, the Democrats, the left-leaning people in the legislature, their political party has as their plank in this state eliminating oil and gas development. So, are they lying about it? Are they lying that that's the goal of theirs? If they're not... then that's the risk that we're taking is by continuing down this path we're just furthering that goal of eliminating oil and gas if you can prop up a permanent fund and grow it
and spend from it and that spending increases over time, maybe perhaps in the future you don't need oil revenue and you can just shut down that industry. This is what I'm saying. There is a section of our society that does not care one bit about the private economy. One bit. It isn't even a factor in their life. They don't understand it. They don't respect it. It doesn't matter to them.
And I'm making an argument that every other state, when they have a budget deficit, it's because they're spending too much and their people and corporations can't support it. We don't have that problem yet. We're on the verge of it. Yeah, we're on the verge of it right now. Ben, can you hold over with us to the top of the next hour? Because I have one more segment that I'd like to do with you. And I don't have any other guests. I couldn't get anybody from the Senate to come in today.
And so I would love to continue with Ben Carpenter because we're getting some truth here. And, you know, maybe we'll peel back on Ben's reserve a little bit and tell us how he really feels about this. We don't mind the Debbie Downer because sometimes that's called... Reality. That's what that's called. It's not Debbie Downer when you say, this might be our only solution. We're going to continue here in just a moment. Ben Carpenter is our guest, The Michael Duke Show.
celebrity-based free Ben Carpenter continues with us here in the break. Chris says, if the politicians that run the legislature did not want deficits, they would just stop looting. The problem is keeping money flowing to special interest is the top priority. And, you know, and what I find ironic about that is because as Ben mentioned earlier, you know, who's going to have to pay the bill down the road. It's going to be us, obviously, but it's also going to be the oil companies.
You know, the the you know, the ones that up to now have supported all this taking of the PFD and all these other kind of things. So as long as you know, as long as they don't get taxed, they're fine. But eventually there will be no more.
pfd there won't be anything else and then they'll be the next ones in the target and then they'll be like oh wait us too now um i i think that's ironic ben yeah and it you have to understand too that from a private sector perspective from an investor perspective This conversation that we're having about what the future holds for the state of Alaska is very unpredictable. My crystal ball is as cloudy as the next guy, right? what the consequence is to us right now.
is that investors and people who might see business opportunity in Alaska also see this risk of instability with our state government spend. So we'll choose to go somewhere else with our money and invest than come to Alaska because we don't want to have a big target on our back. It doesn't make political sense to us, you know, strategic sense with regard to investing to go to Alaska. So there's this cost.
the opportunity cost for continuing to go down the road that we're going down and kicking the can down the road. We think we're doing the right thing. We think we're maintaining our comfort as the right thing. But what we don't see is what's not happening.
And what's not happening is people coming to Alaska and saying, hey, I see opportunity here. And I'm going to invest my money. I'm going to employ people. I'm going to create business opportunities because I see opportunity. We're not going to do that. because there's this uncertainty in the environment.
That's ultimately negative for Alaskans and for our next generation who are expecting that we want to stay in Alaska. We want jobs, but we're... we're shooting ourselves in the foot right we want to maintain our comfort at all costs don't tax me Fine, give up my dividend. But the problem is this structured government that we have that's growing and being propped up. And it adds uncertainty. And that uncertainty is the problem. I mean, the base...
The bottom line is we have a spending problem in this state. That's it. Full stop. I've said it for years. The politicians have always framed it as if it was a revenue problem. Now we have both a revenue and a spending problem because we've basically spent almost every available dollar that's out there.
But at the bottom line is it's become a spending problem. We just don't have the money. And yet every special interest, you've mentioned it a couple times, and I want to get back to it after we rejoin the radio, but you've mentioned it a couple times, public sector unions. are pushing the special interests, and they're totally out of touch, right? I mean, we see them walk into the room for negotiations and say, okay, we want a 15% raise. And you're like, wait, are you?
Have you put a finger, have you checked the pulse of the economy? I mean, people are scrambling out there and you just want, well, it doesn't matter, it's what we want. It's the same attitude that we saw when they came in for the school funding increase. Well, okay, we'll talk about a funding increase, but we want policies. Shut up. We don't want policies. Just shut up and give us our money. That's what we want. We want the money, not the policies. We don't care that we're failing.
And in fact, the argument became, we're not failing, we're starving, because you're just not giving us enough money, even though we know that we've spent more than any other state in the nation. 2015 was one of the last ones. We spent more than any state in the nation, and yet we were still
in the lowest outcome. So it doesn't matter. It has just become this inexorable appetite for spending that has gotten us to this point. And until we acknowledge that there's that problem, this is where we're going to be at. Yeah, I try to boil this down into where it makes sense to people.
If you're in business for yourself or if you're employed for somebody in the private sector, the purpose and the existence here is to compete in the marketplace. And the better you compete, the the better off you are the more comfortable you are um if you don't compete well then you go out of business or you don't have a job so you're you're constantly having to compete the private or the public sector is in some regards competing with itself and other interests, but when they compete,
It's one direction. They take money from the private sector because there's no other source. You're going to take it from the permanent fund earnings. You're going to take it from some tax. And when they compete and when they win, the other side loses, right? Your private economy, whoever's paying the bills, has to lose, has to give up some of their resources in order for the
the better competitors in the public sector to keep their, to win, to get what they want. So we've got this tug of war in the state of Alaska, just like every other state between public sector and private sector. Or we in the public and private sector are being out-competed. Right. Exactly. And ignored. And not even an afterthought at this point. All right. Here we go. Ben Carpenter is our guest. We continue. The Michael Duke Show, common sense, liberty-based, free-thinking radio.
We're going to be back with more here in just a moment. Don't go anywhere. Please like and share. Get more folks involved in this conversation. We need to do that. Whoa, buddy. Put that thing back in its holster. We haven't gone anywhere. I don't understand. Check out themichaeldukesshow.com for information on how to get access to the podcast. Welcome to the party pal. The Michael Duke Show. That's great. Entitlement is astounding to me.
Everyone from a low-budget radio program, this is a dumpster fire. It is time to get a new perspective. We know just what you need, and we've got just the cure. and prepare for a steaming hot cup of freedom. Just... The Michael... This show streaming live the world live around the world on the internet at michaeldukeshow.com and across the state of alaska and this your favorite radio station and or translator good morning my friends and welcome to this uh beautiful
Wednesday edition of the show. We normally try to have somebody on from the Senate minority. here on the program on Wednesdays, but we were unable to pull all that together. Luckily, in hour one, we got talking with former Rep Ben Carpenter, who's now the host of the Must Read Alaska Show podcast. about his tenure during the legislature and his push for the... his push for the fiscal policy working group plan and everything else. And he's agreed to stay over with us here into hour two because
This is a deeper subject, and there's a lot of parts and pieces here that we have been looking at. And I asked him to stick over, and he has agreed to do so. So let's go back over right now. to Ben and get started and pick back up where we left off, I guess I should say. and discuss, continue this discussion. Ben, you mentioned it a couple times during the preceding hour that the... Public sector unions.
have been a big component of this, and I would argue that they are a huge component of it. Also, many other special interests are all part of this because they're all... I mean, I'm reminded of the debate about the dividend back in 2017 and how Ron Duncan and GCI pumped. $2.5, $2.7 million into the campaign to help to support Governor Walker's taking in the PFD. Why? Well, because a huge part of their
of their business model is baked and based on government spending. So you've got public sector unions, you've got dependency industries, you've got all these other people. This is a huge part of that problem. What's your solution? And the solution starts at the ballot box or is expressed at the ballot box. I should say. The start of the solution is you've got the right people step forward.
to help solve the problem. And I say the right people because it takes something that we obviously don't have with the representation that we have now to solve a problem before the train has left the tracks. Long-term thinking, I guess, would be one of the things that you would want.
somebody to represent you that has a longer term vision or ability to see longer term than is than just this year's budget, which is what we talk about, what the legislature talks about every session is just how do we get to... a balanced budget in four months or thereabouts. That's the focus. We're just looking at four-month increments of spending our time for a 12-month budget to get us to the next conversation that we spend four months on the next 12 months.
It is way too short of a time frame for us to be making long decisions that affect us long term. We need to have a much longer term vision. So who in your community has that? um capability who's good at doing that who's who's persistent in your in your community that is tenacious and stays after a problem even if it's hard, even if it's uncomfortable, even if there's personal sacrifice that's necessary. Who is that individual?
Those are the people that you need to send. Good communicators, obviously you need to have somebody that can speak well. And that's why I'm saying it. The answer is expressed at the ballot box because you've got to have these types of people. business oriented. They care about the private sector economy. I cannot say this enough and loud enough and I don't know whether I need to say it in a different language or what.
The makeup of the legislature does not care, and this is expressed in things that we do and don't do, About the private sector economy. Maybe it's because of a lack of understanding or just ulterior motives or competing interests. But we don't care about the private sector economy because it doesn't impact changes in the private sector economy, with the exception of oil industry, doesn't impact our decisions in the four months that we get together. to spend money over the next 12 months.
It doesn't impact it. You can have a major company come in outside of the oil industry and set up shop. And if they're not paying a corporate income tax, there's no connection to the state budget. So we don't care. It doesn't. We don't need more of that. It doesn't help us. Well, you said it earlier in the first hour. You said the people that we really need down there.
are the people who don't want to do it, right? They're the people that are like, I don't have the time, I don't have the energy, I got a business to run. I'm busy about making payroll, making my books balanced. But those are really the people that we need to... have down there because they're the ones that are one going to be motivated to get it done in the shortest amount of time to fix the problem permanently because all we've been doing over the last 15 or 20 years
is essentially like you said kicking the can down the road or slapping a band-aid on it whatever analogy you want to use and pushing it on to the next year and just to have to come back and do it again these people are going to want to come in there fix the long-term problem, get it done in the shortest amount of time possible, and go back to what they were doing. We don't need professional politicians. What we need is business.
leaders who understand how the private sector can direct all that and find a solution that's more long-term. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. We don't get to where we need to be or where we want to be, which is a government that is constrained and focused on economic growth. We don't get there. unless we send representatives to that government that care about that, that have experience with that, that make decisions at the legislative level that support that.
It just is not going to happen on its own. You're being out-competed by people of different political persuasion and different thoughts that see comfort and the future of their lives being maintained by state spending, by programs and services that the state government can offer. That's the conversation that's winning in the halls of power within our state. Rob brings up an interesting point. Rob Myers is in the chat room. The incentives of electoral politics encourage short-term thinking.
So we need a fiscal structure that encourages long-term thinking, and we don't have that yet. Do you agree with that? And if so, how would we create that structure that encourages that long-term thinking in your mind? So, it's a very interesting question. I've already tried to paint the picture that the legislature doesn't care about the private economy, and it's
It's hard to wrap your hands around, but here's what I'll say. When a business transaction happens today, Very little of that, if any, of that transaction has any impact on the budget, even if it's a really small. You've got fees that get paid.
and a corporate income tax that gets paid you've got oil tax taxes and royalties that get paid right but and I'll just use myself as an example I've got a flower farm and a flower business with my wife we make bouquets and deliver them right So each one of those transactions matters to my local borough because I pay a borough sales tax on those transactions.
At the state level, that economic activity doesn't matter to the decisions that have to be made in the four months that we come together to do a budget for the next 12. Right. It doesn't matter. You can have more of those transactions or you can have less of them and it doesn't impact the state budget. So the legislature, the members that make up the legislature, the finance committee.
They don't even consider it as a factor. But if you implemented a statewide sales tax, for example, in conjunction with a spending limit so that you don't have a runaway government, and reduce your expenses of the government together as a political solution to get people to buy into this. That's that statewide sales tax then generates revenue for the state government.
The legislature then cares about each one of those transactions because the more transactions you have, the more revenue that comes into the state. So you're setting up a structure. by which your your legislature has revenue coming in and then it cares about that it cares about you know i'll use an example we got unanimous support, even from Democrats, to support the Willow Project.
oh there was some gnashing of teeth and i really don't want to support oil but in the end we got unanimous support last session for for opening up the willow project okay we sent a resolution to congress supporting it biden please open this up okay allow allow the developer to develop the willow project why the democrat party says we want to eliminate oil and gas development in the state of alaska so why do the democrats in the legislature support allowing the Willow project to go forward.
One reason and one reason only. Money. The Willow Project promises more revenue to the state government. I'm not suggesting that the solution is just to give government more money. What I'm suggesting is changing the structure of where we get our money from so that the legislature cares about... the money that's being generated in that capacity. So if you've got permanent fund earnings that are coming out to the people in the form of a dividend,
That benefits the transactions that are happening in your private economy. Yeah, sure, some of it's wasted, but government money is wasted all the time. Government spending is wasted all the time. So a little bit of waste in the private sector is not a big deal. It's apples and apples. You waste it both ways.
but that money is being spent in the private sector and then your structure collects a portion of that through the transactions that happen and that matters whether you're in the bush or whether you're in urban alaska it matters that those business transactions happen And then a small portion of each one of those transactions goes back to the state government. That's the structure.
that forces the legislature to recognize, hey, you know what? I care that I've got more transactions, business transactions happening in the state because it means more revenue to the state government. We don't have that in the state. Think about all of the all of the tourists that come into the state and spend money here They come from states who have income taxes or they have sales taxes or they have books
Those tourists coming to the state of Alaska aren't going to not come because we have a sales tax. It's just the way, it's the structure in which you fund your state government. How do you get the government to care about that which you care about, which is jobs and a growing economy? You have to find a connection to the decisions that are being made at the legislature, and it's not just at the ballot box.
It is in the structures, it is in the statutes that you put in place to fund your state government. I don't know whether that resonates with any of the listeners or not. It certainly could be taken out of context to say that I'm all for taxing people, but that is not the case because the end result... of having 50% of your permanent fund earnings being spent. through the dividend program and into the pockets of people and then the people taking a 2% sales tax
means you have more money in your pocket at the end of the year with that type of structure than you do with a government just taking all of the dividend. Right, which is a tax, which is a tax, and it's a de facto tax in and of itself. So you're already being taxed by the taking of the PFD. It's a disingenuous argument to say, do you want a tax or a PFD? We're already being taxed. on that one. And the structure of taking the dividend means
That business transaction that would have happened doesn't happen. Right. Or the jobs that would have been created. We talked about the knock-on effects of all that money going into the economy. And whether you are down at Costco supporting them and their employees by buying a big screen TV or whether you're investing it in business.
to create a new business or whether you're buying heating oil or whatever, you're affecting the economy in a larger way than the government would be. And again, you're not advocating for taxes in isolation. You're saying this has to be part of a whole, I mean, it's a repeat, right? This is the whole fiscal plan. Again, it's got to have a spending cap. It's got to have.
some cuts. It's got to have some taxation on the oil industry. It's got to have a broad-based tax. It's got to have protections for the permanent fund. All these things have to be part and parcel of this deal. That is the answer. That it is a structural rebalancing of the state of Alaska's economic model, our system, right?
It is not just implementing attacks. That will not help us in the long run. Okay. We're up against the break again, and I'm going to abuse Ben and ask him to stick for one more. before I let him go, because I have one of my favorite questions that we're about to ask here of anybody who comes on to talk about these kind of fiscal issues, and we're going to... here in just a moment. Ben Carpenter is our guest.
The Michael Duke Show. Don't forget, if you're listening on the radio, you want folks to hear this, you can go back and share the podcast, which is available wherever you find podcasts, Spotify, CastBox, Stitcher, Google. or you can share the YouTube or Facebook video as well. And I think we need to have more people talking about this.
Because we're, I mean, they're already saying, when the politicians say next year is going to be bad, the same politicians that have been in avoidance and denial for years that were in a fiscal crisis, when they say it's going to be bad. you know it's going to be bad. people up there all right uh we'll continue in just a moment the michael duke show common sense radio Running on 100% pure Beard power. Oh, also, some coffee. We dip our beard in coffee. Ha, nice beard. The Michael Duke Show.
Rob makes another interesting comment after he, because I thought that was a great question from Rob talking about the long-term thinking and how do we fix it. But he said when we were talking about business leaders being kind of the people that we wanted to have in there, he goes, our business leaders so far have been focused on avoiding taxes and making money from the government.
Should we elect Ron Duncan? I mean, no, obviously. And I think there has to be that caveat because many businesses in the state of Alaska, corporations, some of these big companies, have built their entire business model. around that government largesse, right? Government contracts and being part of it. And that's the same group that's saying, oh, sure, take the PFD because we're still going to get paid.
And that's not what we want is people who are out there in the sector who are struggling and are basically living almost entirely on the private sector. Those are the people we want. Right, Ben? Yeah, that's exactly right. He brings up a very valid point. It is private business that is traditional in the sense that they are competing in the marketplace. and their business model is not tied to state spending.
That is the area of our society, our culture, that needs to influence at the state level more than it is now. It is a must. Otherwise, We're always going to be. the afterthought is what I'm trying to wrap my brain around here. Always the afterthought as to what is important within the state of Alaska. And the question that we ought to be asking ourselves Step back and take it out of the financial realm for just a second and say, are you more or less free with a smaller or larger government?
So I am less free with a larger government. Larger government comes with larger costs and more regulations. Look at what's happening with the federal government. 27% of our budget is or has been financed by debt at the national level. Half of that debt is the service on the debt now. That's a tax avoidance situation.
Your congressmen and senators in Washington, D.C. have said, we want to continue federal spending. Your business interests have said, please continue federal spending. It's going to hurt our bottom line if you don't spend more money. And 27% of that is coming, we're just financing, we're putting it on the credit card.
It's a similar model to the state of Alaska's thinking, please, government, please continue spending. My business is going to hurt if you don't have the state money and the federal pass-through money coming to us. So yes, take my dividend. My business is going to hurt if you don't. And please don't tax me. That would be bad too.
So this really has to be an awareness and an acknowledging that we are asking our government to do things that we are not willing to pay for ourselves. We want somebody else to pay for. And this is a cultural problem in Alaska and nationally. It's, again, avoidance. I don't even know if I want you to try and address Randy, who says trimming the PFD so that a balanced budget is maintained is not a true task.
Handing out excessive free money beyond what fits in the balanced budget is irresponsible. Again, it's not free money, Randy. It's our money. That's our portion of it. Bang my head into the wall. You're missing the point, Randy. Yeah, you're missing the point. And the thing is, is that if we continue to balance the budget on the PFD...
It's a self-licking, there's no more self-licking ice cream cone. It's gone. Once it's gone next year, then how do they balance the budget? Because they have no fiscal discipline. Yeah, just so an interesting thought process here, a thought challenge would be to say, well, and the PFD and the permanent fund went away, right? What would we do then?
Yeah, well, there would be a reckoning, Ben. That's what would happen. There would be a reckoning because then the state would come to you and say, well, we need to tax you $20,000 per year per each person. there would be an immediate screeching halt. You would hear it from space. That's how fast that would happen. Ben Carpenter is our guest. We're going to jump back into it. Here we go. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty Base, Free Thinking Radio.
The Michael Duke Show. Seriously humorous with a pinch of intellect. Pinch of ill. Sorry. That is humorous. Here's Michael Dukes. Okay, Ben Carpenter is our guest. I have abused my relationship with him by forcing him to stick over into hour two. Ben, I appreciate it. Thank you. So this is the question that I love to ask.
simply because I think it's, again, it's an interesting thought experiment to say, you know, Ben Carpenter is emperor of the world, king for a day, however you want to put it. You have all the power. what would be your actions, or Ben Carpenter was governor, I mean, what would be your actions
to right the ship, to fix this, not just for now, but in perpetuity. If you had your druthers and you had the power to do it, to wave your hand and make it happen, What would you be doing in this state to bring us back on court? That's a real simple answer. I would do what I said I wanted to do in the last legislature. I would implement the plans or at least attempt to implement the bills that I brought forward to further the fiscal policy working group.
that's what i would do i would make sure that our structural um Reliance on the permanent fund earnings includes earnings going to the private sector. And I would return a set of those funds to the state government after a business transaction has occurred in our private sector. to the state government and i would limit the amount of spending growth that can happen on our state government
so that the legislature, the decision making that happens in the legislature, has some sort of fiscal discipline, right? Forces us to have that discipline. We've recognized that that is necessary. Because we have two spending limits in place right now, one constitutionally, one statutory, and neither of them are effective. So what we need is similar to Colorado with their TABOR, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, to put an effective spending limit to force, from the people's perspective, force.
spending discipline on the legislature, who's obviously proven themselves incapable of it. We spent $16 billion out of our savings account, out of the CBR. to kick the can down the road of avoiding other other uncomfortable decisions so forcing that spending limit Those three things right there would get us down the road. reducing your corporate income tax rate.
to spur economic development is something that other governors and other states do when they want to encourage economic activity, reducing the corporate income tax rate. Those are some of the things that I would think would be fiscally responsible things to do for the state of Alaska and private sector economically focused. It's easy. It's an easy answer. That's what I would attempt to do.
If you were a governor, would you put forward... um you know a a an omnibus a couple bills i mean one has to be statutory obviously other one would have to be constitutional so there'd have to be two separate bills at least but Would you put forward a raft of bills that would address this as a governor? I mean, again, going back to the fact that Alaska has one of the strongest governors in the country. Would that be the plan if you had that ability to at least direct the boat in that way?
Yes, any governor can bring forward proposed bills to the legislature. from a technical perspective a technical answer to your question yes that's what what any governor can do and does. A current governor included, he's put forward bills he wants the legislature to consider. I think there's also one other thing, not just changing the statute, but changing regulation and just better managing. If you take a look at the statutes that have created the Office of Management and Budget and
directed how the state government is, including the legislature and the governor's responsibilities for managing state government. That's what I'm referring to as the Executive Budget Act. There are some things in that that we could change to make that a little bit better statute. But we currently, the legislature and the governor, currently have statutes that are supposed to guide how we manage our state government.
So for example, we have a whole bunch of positions that aren't being filled, meaning we appropriate money, we appropriate the position and then no one gets hired. Well, in the private sector. Usually, when money's directed to a specific thing, it's held in account for that specific thing, and there's a decision to move it. In the legislature, we don't make that decision. That money just gets spent.
on something else within that department, even though somebody's not hired in that position. And we've got hundreds of millions of dollars that are being... spent that way. Right. I mean, you and I as private business owners, We don't allocate money on our budgets for a position that is not filled, right? If we're only going to hire somebody, that's one thing. And if we know it's going to happen, that's one thing. But we don't hold it on the budget for years.
I know you guys tried to take out some of those unfilled positions, some of which have been on the books for, one had been on the books for 10 years they'd been receiving funding for positions that were unfilled. But any, you know, two, three, four, five years, that's just money that should never have gone out there. But the minute you try and cut it, oh, no, we can't do that.
It's insanity. It amounts to a slush fund right now. It is money that can be moved around. And I personally think the effect, whether it's the intention or not, but the effect here is... look, we've got all these possessions that we can't fill. Therefore, we must have a with some fiscal nature as to why we can't fill these, right? The pay is not enough. There's not a good enough retirement system. For some reason, employees don't want this job, right?
But there's not a reckoning that comes back to the legislature that says, hey, I wasn't able to use this money this year. And here's the reason why I think we didn't appropriate enough money for pay or for benefits to get somebody hired into here. We just spend it and we don't tell the legislature or the Alaskans how we spend it. We just spent it on something. So we've got a system in place, a structure in place that incentivizes
inefficiency in not fixing the problem because it makes the bureaucrats job easier to have money that they can spend on different things without accountability. That's the system we have in place. So how do you fix it? The Executive Budget Act will tell the governor and tell the legislature who's responsible for creating the control measures or the measurements.
to know how we're spending it and where it's going and is it is it right is it are we spending in the right places all we need is better management and that start at the governor's office. He is the one that's responsible for hiring the people that do the management of the government. So that is not exactly an outcome of a fiscal policy working group, but I think it ties in nicely with reductions in spending.
instead of just taking an axe to the budget, you know, in the four months that we talk about budgets for the next 12, instead of taking an axe to it, you're having a conversation during the off season that says, How do we improve the services that we provide and reduce the cost of how we do it? And that's what the Executive Budget Act is supposed to cause the government to do, but we're not.
We're not doing that very well, right? I think the next governor needs to focus on that. What we recognize at the federal level is what DOGE is doing right now. We don't technically need a DOGE in Alaska. We've got an OMB with the authority to do what DOGE is doing at the federal level. So here's the question that I know that I hate because I've gotten it a few times, but... So, Ben, would you consider a run for governor to take the bull by the horns on this? Or is that, I mean, what?
People have asked. Your name has come up several times when we've had these discussions about who would make a great governor in those regards. Not to put you on the spot, but I'm going to put you on the spot. What do you say? I mean... I don't know. Do I see what needs to happen? Yes. Do I think that I can successfully get there? No, not under the current environment.
I don't see that there is a path forward for that happening. There would have to be some groundswell of support and things happen to be able to make that. make that path happen. Just look at a lowly Senate race. I raised $80,000. from Alaskans. for that race, and that should be enough to win a Senate race. The opposition raised over $100,000 from various sources including Alaskans but also outside money and union money and all of that. I
I just, I don't see it in the cards right now. And I hate to, again, the Debbie Downer piece of this. I think that the next governor of the state of Alaska is the one that solidifies the union support. They solidify AFN and the Alaska Native support. And those two pieces right there are what is going to... the result in the next governor right and that's where i think the power structure is and obviously what i'm selling
is not going to resonate with either of those two constituencies. It should for the long term because who else is going to focus on making the job better, right? you know if i'm talking to a government employee i say do you like coming to work i mean i know you like the paycheck and you like the time off and you like the retirement but do you like coming to work do you like the place where you work If the answer is no, then management needs to fix that. Right.
Well, and I think that you have an opportunity now. Ben is now the host of the Must Read show, the Must Read Alaska podcast. And so when people have talked to me about, you know, you should run for office, you should do this, you should do that. And I always say, I feel like I have much more, I can have a much bigger effect, a much greater effect on the outside. pointing inward to all the problems and saying, this is what we can do. Now you've got this bullhorn.
To be able to say these things and talk about these things, not restricted by, you know, decorum or, you know, hurting people's feelings or anything else. And so you have a bigger opportunity here to push that out there as well. yeah that's true we're testing those waters yeah yeah we're doing i i don't like um in in my uh my personal being my makeup i don't um enjoy just having just complaining about something. I really do want to have my hands involved with fixing the problem.
And so from that regard, I am attempting to continue to influence. And with that, you know, DNA, makeup in my DNA. I can't just sit and complain and not have solutions. Final thoughts, Ben Carpenter, our guest this morning, former representative and host of The Must Read Show. Your final thoughts for today, how can we, as just plain old plebeian citizens out here, what do we do? How do we help fix this? What's it going to take?
There's no substitute for educating yourself on the problem. And I'm living proof of it. When I first ran for office, I had to convince people that I knew what the problem was and there's no way I knew what the problem was. I had to get involved and then the problem quickly showed up.
studied it and i understood and and i think i have a pretty good understanding of the fiscal situation in the state of alaska um so you got to educate yourself and you got to care you gotta care what direction is happening with the state and if if you don't somebody else will and they may not have your same interests or your same cares in in in mind right so right with this if it's going to be a government of the people by the people and for the people then
Which people is that? That's what matters. You can't just be comfortable. and think that other people are going to have your same interests in mind. You've got to participate. This has got to be a... larger group participating in the process. So I guess that's what I leave with. I guess I would say they always say that politics is a participatory sport. and government is what happens to you when you stop paying attention.
because those special interests out there whether it's people who are on some kind of government program or whether it's businesses who are, you know, have got their whole fiscal model built around that government spending. they are damn well going to be interested in that and they're going to be invested. And so we need to get as invested as well. We need to participate. We can't just let it go by the wayside and throw our hands up in the air.
and say I'm frustrated and I don't like it and I'm just not going to participate anymore. We can't do that.
We've got to stay engaged and not grow weary in well-doing, as I like to say. Ben Carpenter, thank you, my friend. I appreciate you coming on board and allowing me to... stretch our conversation a little bit i appreciate that thank you for being part of it today thanks michael always a pleasure and i'm good to see you again yep well we'll have to do this again hold the line for just We got one more. I'm gonna after some of my thoughts and we We're broadcasting live through a series of...
Allowing all of these entities to provide streaming stuff going on the internet. Well, it's kind of hard to explain. Sorry. Streaming live every weekly morning on Facebook. And MichaelDukesShow.com. Ben, I mean, again, you and I could go on about this for just hours because this is, you know, we could see what's happening. And, and, um, I mean, I'm.
I know you've been frustrated with everything, how it went down in the legislature and everything else. And of course, 25 years of me talking about the same thing, I just feel like... a broken record, but I'm hoping that as, and I'm coming to the same conclusion that you are, that it's going to have to hit the fan for people to really wake up and realize. that that's the only way that an alcoholic or an addict
really ever decides to make a change is they've got to hit rock bottom. And we as a state, I think are going to have to hit rock bottom before we can start rebuilding. But I wanted to give you again, the final bite of the apple here for any, any other thoughts you got. I think you're spot on. The behavior of an addict is probably what best describes our American culture right now. I say this gently, that we are addicted to comfort.
We are so addicted that we are not more concerned with the future of our country and our state of what we're handing our next generation, our kids and our grandkids and their kids. and we're more concerned about the things of now. And the evidence of that is allowing a dividend program that was created to benefit individual Alaskans in perpetuity to go away. It is evidenced by allowing or even encouraging our national leaders
to run up our national debt to continue spending policies that are on us, that benefit us. Who pays that national debt if it isn't the future generation? so we have we we this current generation have a very strong addiction to comfort and continuing being taken care of by our governments and it is It is for our ruin that we continue that behavior. We must address this addiction to easy money and
reliance on more and more government spending. You do not get more freedom with more government. That is not how it works. No, we created, and we've created a dependency state, right? In the state, everybody is, you know, we're just this tremendous, one third of the people are on Medicaid, right? And we got section eight housing and all these other programs. And then on the other side of the equation, we've got all these companies
that are dependent on the government contracts and everything else. That's what's driving this more than anything is you've got movers and shakers, business owners in this state. who are reliant on state spending and they're, they think that's okay. Yeah. Like that is,
That is not okay. That does not make us more healthy going forward. Yeah. Well, Ben, we should do this more often. And I would love to have a further conversation with you on this. I appreciate you coming on board and sharing with us. And we look forward to talking to you again here soon. Anytime. Okay. Have a good day. Thanks for coming on board. Appreciate it. Ben Carpenter, our guest here on the program for the show today.
I mean, he said he doesn't want to be Debbie Downer, and neither do I, but at some point, you've got to realize that maybe there's only one real solution here. And the solution is the wheels have to come off the bus. You know, the wheels have got to come off the bus. I didn't ask Ben what he thought of Bernadette as a candidate, but I mean, I think you've got kind of a feel for where he thinks things are going to go this year, and he could be right.
And somebody said, you know, somebody said that Click Bishop checked two boxes on that. um on that check mark of the unions and the big government spend it's uh you know it's definitely Definitely going to be problematic for the future. The next governor is going to have a mess on their hands. And it'll be interesting to see how they play it when it's all said and done. Terry said, the truth hurts. Deal with it. Deal with it.
Frank said nobody is talking about all the federal funds the state receives. Talk about addicts. I'm with you. We've been talking about that on this program for years as well. But yeah, I mean, that's the thing. Nobody wants to be the bad guy. Nobody wants to be the guy. that says we got to live within our means not when people have been living the gravy train for so long they just they no they don't want it they don't want to hear that they don't
Um, all right. Uh, Cindy said, getting rid of rank choice voting, get rid of rank choice voting, or we will continue to get what we, or continue to get what we get. Yeah. Um... In our form of government, says Rob, politics generally follows culture, not the other way around. That's true. Although it can contribute to culture, again, going back to my whole point about the dependency state, it can contribute to culture in that way as well.
All right, let's get back to it. Here we go. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty Base, Free Thinking Radio. One final segment. Let's do this. The Michael Duke Show. versus right. Yeah, I had to look that word up too. I don't think it means what he thinks of me. Michael Dukes! the show today i felt bad holding ben over Peace. It's just a breath of fresh air to be able to talk with Ben about what we're dealing with here.
And, you know, as much as I would like to see Ben Carpenter be governor, I fear that his prediction is also correct that without a change in the way that the legislature does business without changing some of the players out of the legislature. it almost doesn't matter how strong the governor is he doesn't you know it would be a very difficult lift to fix all the problems simply as governor.
You need a governor that has a strong vision, like what Ben talked about. And then you need a legislature, or at least a part of a legislature, that can support him and back him up on that. And that's part of what we saw that was the failure point in 2018 and 19 when Governor Dunleavy, then Governor Dunleavy, put out his budget. And we saw the faltering of the... conservative air quotes conservative minority at the time who didn't stand up and help to uphold his veto
We saw, you know, people say, well, but that's great, but not my program. That's great, but not in my district. And, I mean, I understand. You know, I understand that you don't want to be the bad guy that allows something in your district to be defunded. Especially if there's people in other districts who didn't get defunded and you're like, oh, you know, you don't want to look like that. But somebody has got to be the bad guy. Somebody has got to be the adult in the room.
And if we don't address this, you know, financially, this is going to kill us. That's the problem. I mean, this is going to hurt us. And until we get a grip on that and understand that we are, you know, we are... just you know months or maybe a year or two away from completely losing the dividend and then having to pay a tax in addition to that.
All these people, Randy included, everybody who keeps going on and on about, oh, I'd give up the dividend, free money, let them balance the budget on that, let them do that. You're not ensuring or enforcing any fiscal discipline on the legislature by doing that. You're playing this game of avoidance. And that is never going to end well unless you address the root problem. It's never going to fix it.
And that's the thing. You can't ensure fiscal discipline in somebody by just giving them more money. Which is essentially what we've done in this state for years. Legislature can't be fiscally responsible. We just gave him more money. We didn't hold them accountable when they drained the SBR. We didn't hold them accountable when they drained the CBR. We didn't hold them accountable when Governor Walker vetoed the PFD, the first PFD. I mean, I was just, I was just shocked at the time.
that they didn't vote to override his veto of the permanent fund. I thought that was what was going to happen. I mean, the permanent fund was the third rail of politics. Nobody touched the PFD. And yet, he did it. With no ramifications. Well, ramifications to him in that he did not get re-elected as governor.
But the legislature should have been on the hook this whole time for all of this. And I talked about this at the time. I mean, I... I was just shocked at the time that nobody seemed to be as outraged as I was that this is what happened and that the legislature, who could have, especially the minority members, who could have voted to override, they just didn't, nobody pushed it. And we had a bunch of Republicans in the Senate at that point. They were holding the majority, and they didn't push it.
And Harold Walker slashing the PFD resulted in major growth of the fund. Well, sure, because he stole all our money and left it in the fund. I mean, that's like me saying, I came and robbed you, Harold, and put all that money in investments, and it resulted in major growths of my fund. You sure did. But I still robbed it from you. I still robbed you. I mean, that's the most ridiculous thing I've heard today. Of course it resulted in growth of the fund.
And then they sat on that money for, what, three years? Rob Meyer says the legislature didn't override Walker's veto because the veto was what most wanted to do, but they didn't have the guts to do it on their own. Yeah. Exactly. That's exactly it. They didn't want to be that guy or gal or whatever. And it's the same thing we're facing today. Again, the avoidance of being the grown-up in the room who has to say, According to the math this is not going to work. That's where we're at right now.
And maybe what it's going to take is a full-blown fiscal catastrophe. You know, maybe when the legislature comes back and they take the full PFD next year, which, again, I fully expect that the PFD will be completely consumed next year based on just all the stuff we're hearing about how bad it's going to be and everything else. And the fact that there's like $440, $450 million is what they're going to, you know, that'll be gone.
And then the next year, because it's predicted to be just as bad as this coming year. they'll come in and say, well, it's time for you Alaskans to pay your fair share. Maybe then we'll be ready to invest. But we don't yet live in a world where the Alaska people... ready for themselves to invest in their state government. Maybe then we'll be ready to invest in our state government. $20,000 for every man, woman and child in the state is what they're spending right now.
How's that working out for you? Are you getting your 20, 40, 60, 80 thousand dollars? worth of state spend? Are you seeing the results of all that juicy state money? Yeah. Okay, well, tomorrow's another day. I have no idea what we're going to talk about tomorrow. Maybe we should do something a little lighter. This is kind of heavy today. We'll figure it out. Alright, we gotta go. The Michael Duke Show. common sense Liberty Bank Free Thinking Radio. you guys tomorrow because Love one another.
Live well, please. All right, my friends, I gotta go. Randy, of course, thinks that Governor Walker's actions were horrendous. Yeah, maybe we do summer recipes. I know Harold's been going on and on about recipes. Maybe we do summer recipes tomorrow. I'll tell you. You want a secret? Winter king salmon. In a pan. with the Korean marinade, the Bibligo, Korean marinade, Bibigo, Korean marinade, you can get at Costco.
bake that in a mess of that baby go and then make bone broth rice and then put that salmon over the rice with the oh so good so good i mean i got like 80 pounds of fresh winter king in my freezer maybe maybe it's time for a salmon fry i don't know we'll see maybe we'll talk about that tomorrow i don't know man maybe we need a little bit of fun frivolity tomorrow maybe that's what it's All right, we gotta go. Thank you, my friends. Good to talk. Have a great day. And now we are Slimy.
internet people. It's the Michael Duke Show.