Wednesday 5/21/25 | No Veto for you | Shower Hour of Power

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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. Hello my friends and welcome to the program. It is the Michael Duke Show, hour one of this big hump day post-session show. You wouldn't think that that would happen. I mean, today is... Usually the last day, and historically they have gone into the wee hours of the night and have always driven it right to the last minute.

to, you know, to finalize everything and get everything done. But today... Nope, here we are. Here we are. We are, uh, we are ready to go with our, with... They had a short, short joint session yesterday where they had a historic veto override. First time in over 20 years. That, um, first time in over 20 years that they have voted to override the governor's veto. And, um...

We'll see. We'll see what happens here. But it was a rough go. We're going to go over everything that happened yesterday and all the details, everything that we can come up with, any thoughts that we have. and what's left on the table. What's left on the table this morning? And then... We will, and then we're going to recap here in Hour 2. with the first post-session shower hour of power. State Senator Mike Schauer is going to be joining us in hour two for a full recap.

of what happened in this year's session and his thoughts. his feelings, his insight. on everything that that's going to be going on here in the interim between sessions. And then what are we looking at for next? So that's going to be, which is already, already shaping up. to be a real barn bird. A real barn burner this coming year. All right. Yeah. Once again, Chris, Chris, I think kind of Chris in the chat room makes a comment that I think kind of summates my whole feeling.

through what's going on. Chris says, once again, just enough legislators to keep the money flowing to special interests. And that's what's going on. What's the answer to this? Vote harder. Vote harder! I mean, right? That's going to be the answer to some... I mean, that's what it feels like. Doesn't it feel like that's what we keep saying? If we just voted harder, if we just changed out one more legislator, if we just... E aí There's got to be a change in mindset.

Voting harder is not going... And I understand the sentiment of that. Don't get me wrong. I understand the sentiment of putting the right people in there and doing all that. But the problem, of course, is that while we have changed out a significant portion of the legislature in the last five, six years, They're still... The core of the core.

Right? There's still those business as usual folks who are in there doing business the way that they've always done it. Hence the business as usual people. That's what they've done. They continue to, you know, hold the line on big government spending. and to ignore the inevitable pain that is coming down the pike. This next year, $1.5 billion deficit estimated for this next year.

If the president gets his way and continues to push hard on driving down the price of oil, which is happening. I mean, we're seeing gas prices are some of the lowest that we've seen in quite a while. And his stated goal is to get oil down to somewhere near $50 a barrel. If, you know, anywhere between 50 and 60 is an immediate hardship for the state of Alaska. because they're getting 20-25% of their overall revenue from, of course, oil royalties and production. And so, here we go.

here we go if it drops down into something like that then we will see a tremendous dip in the revenues for the state. So... We'll see. We'll see what happens. The good news, if there is any good news, according to the numbers that were released, now I haven't gone down through everything in... taking a look at all this on a piece-by-piece basis and seeing the overall budget numbers. But as it's being reported right now in the legislature, we actually...

According to the... Maybe I'm wrong, but this is what's being reported right now. We're actually spending less this year than we did last year. Now, if true, and this is accounting, this is not any of the voodoo, you know, sorceress voodoo economics things, as long as they're counting everything the way that I think that they're counting it. We're going to be spending $6.2 billion at general purpose state spending. Like UGF spending. which would put it about 300 million behind.

last year's budget of 6.5. Now, that 6.5 doesn't count the additional $200 million from the supplemental budget this year. for the supplemental budget for the current year. So although they enacted a budget of $6.5 billion, they actually were looking to true up somewhere around the $6.7 billion range. Now, that doesn't mean that...

Even though they put a $6.5 billion budget in for this year that... or 6.2 rather there may not be a half a billion dollars and we just don't know what the full year is going to look like until we get to the middle of next session or early part of next session And then they'll say, oh yeah, by the way, we're going to need another. I mean, maybe they soft-sold the whole thing. Maybe they undersold it. But I guess you could say, if these numbers ring true...

then I guess that's a good thing. I don't think it was... It had nothing to do... with the will of the legislature, not a specific... politician who has been, you know, who was slamming their fist on the table and saying, I'm mad as hell and am I going to take it anymore? No, this was more a function of we just don't have the money. They would spend it if they could. And remember, we still had to rob Peter to pay Paul. because they attempted to take that $189 million for the...

supplemental budget. And it was supposed to come out of the CBR. But that failed. So instead, they took up $100 million from the ADA, Alaska Economic Development Authority, Export Authority, the investment bank. They took $100 million from the investment bank, and they took $100 million from the state's Higher Education Investment Fund. Which, I have questions about that. I have... I have questions about the Higher Education Investment Fund, but I guess that's a future me problem at this point.

But the CBR vote failed, so they had that contingency language in to pull it from ADEA's investment bank and from the higher education fund, and so they did. so um i think it was pretty much uh at this point this was This was about as good as you're going to expect. Now, the additional $167 or $170 million from the $700 increase in the BSA, That would have been nice to see not be spent on an ongoing basis. And that was one of my main beefs with this whole thing.

You know, if you were going to spend it, if you were going to put the money in, okay, great. If that's what you were just determined to do. was that no matter what, because you couldn't take the caterwauling, you couldn't take all that, you were going to spend it. Okay, well, that's great. That's great. But... Продолжение следует... why would you spend it inside the formula, which then locks us in for eternity, essentially. Why would you not do, again, the one-time funding?

I mean, I know that's not what the powers that be wanted. I know that's not what the NEA, the teachers union wanted. I know that's not what the school districts wanted because, you know, they always want funding certainty, right? That's what they're looking for. Funding. Certainty. But there's... I mean, come on. How much certainty do any of us have in our lives?

I mean, it's not realistic, especially As we watch the oil revenues decline, the permanent funds struggling to maintain, you know, to try and reach that 5% return mark, which apparently it can't do. even though there's plenty of other funds out there that have got no problem returning 5%. And yet here we are. Here. We. Are. Продолжение следует... I mean, I don't know. And of course, the override on the governor's education spending...

I mean, I've got questions. I've got so many questions. I mean, again, going back to my discussion with Mike Kronk back when he was on the program here about three or four weeks ago, asking him specifically... You know, knowing that he supported an increase in education spend, but I asked him specifically, would you vote for it to be inside or outside the formula?

And he vacillated and waffled on me. And I knew immediately what that meant. That meant that he supported it inside the formula, but he just didn't want to say because he knows how that's going to, you know, he knew how that was going to be portrayed. But there's a bunch of folks out there who you were hopefully, you know, who you... supported and that maybe you expected a little better from. There's a couple surprises to me. I mean, I don't know if maybe surprise is too strong a word.

But one in particular I kind of raised my eyebrow out, and we'll talk about that here in a second as we get back to this. But, you know, some of these votes, some of these names, no surprise, other names. little bit more surprising as to why what the justice And we're going to find out more about that here in a minute. Don't go anywhere. The Michael Luke. Authority-based, free-thinking organization. Lord Tyler Mar here. If you missed the show Listen to it on your time with Dukes On Demand.

Oh, and it's freight. Like America used to be. Streaming live every weekly morning on Facebook Live and... show.com. Alright. Yeah. Alright. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Miguel says, boy, you're full of optimism, Miguel. Can't wait for the governor to do his line item veto or cuts and turn that in at the very last minute as they deserve that.

Yeah, I mean, he still could do that. But yesterday, and we'll get into this here in a little bit, but yesterday was a message to the governor. The message to the governor was, we got you. And don't, you know, that 46 vote. was a warning to the governor on the line item veto. So we'll see where that comes down at. Um... Oh wow. The doge watchdogs of Alaska government. I don't know who they are, but they're in the chat room.

Attention legislators and staffers, just a friendly reminder that you were elected for a full year, not just the month you spend in June. The session may be over, but your obligations to Alaska are still very much a thing. You and your staff are big, fully paid during the interim. Nice gig, right? so why don't you drop a comment here and let your constituents know what your office hours are now that you've left Juneau, which staff members can be called for assistance, etc., etc.

Did I see the must-read headlines? Well, there's a few must-read headlines. Which one are you talking about? I don't see anything that just I don't see any glaring headlines here, Miguel. I don't know which one you're speaking to specifically. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Joel over on YouTube said there is no political solution. That's ominous. Um... I'm going saying we need to get it back to the road system. Move the venue, says Barbara.

miguel says we need to get it back to the road system i mean i think that would go a long way but i mean that's a heavy lift guys that's a heavy lift i mean the governor called that special session in Wasilla and most everybody didn't show up. Wait, wait, wait. Brian says, I thought the permanent fund was supposed to mitigate these ups and downs. Money well, I think, was the term.

Kevin said that he heard that as well, that the total operating budget is less than last year's. I mean, I guess that's the only... Again, not by choice, right? But because of the circumstances of the situation, there's just no more money. Um... Changing out elected seats, says Jeffrey, is of no use when you have entrenched unelected bureaucrats running the show. I'm sure that's what he meant was unelected bureaucrats running the show.

Kevin McCabe said, well, Senator Hoffman did send out a memo that said no more spending. Good luck with that. Uh... Anthony. Oh, only $6.2 billion in spending. This statement is morbid optimism, like saying, hey, the meteor coming at Earth that will wipe out humanity on Friday is actually slower than we thought. It'll hit us next week. Yay. Yeah. Yeah. Ask the... funding uncertainty. Yeah. Melissa's like... Miguel was like, Tax me harder, Daddy! And Melissa was like, It's too early for that.

Melissa really hates that. I don't know why. Eternity isn't that long when you account for the whole system's about to implode. i mean it's true the eternity may be a very short eternity that's for sure 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. Okay. Let's um... Let's continue on discussions here. What's going on with this veto override?

We look at the names, we look at the numbers, we look at what happened yesterday in the vote. And there was no debate. There was no discussion. I mean, the... the whole thing got started and immediately It was almost done almost immediately. 9.08 a.m. They went in at 9 and 8 minutes later I got a message that the vote was done. There was no debate. There was no discussions. There was no standing on the floor. There was nothing. There was no fight.

Apparently, in one of the articles that I was reading this morning, and I don't remember which one, I'm not going to go back and look at it, Gary Stevens was like, well, when I heard we had 46 before the vote, I mean, it was a done deal. All the arm twisting and the pressuring and everything else had already gone on. So, what happened? I would argue that there was a bunch of what were reportedly fiscal conservatives who

I guess, just caved to the pressure? Now, I mean, they'll all say that they were serving their districts, right? They'll all say, well, I was just doing what my constituency wants. Well, I understand that there is a pressure to do that, but when I ran for office, I told people at the time that I'm going to do my best with my decision. I definitely want to get your input. but I'm going to use my own judgment on whether or not I'm going to vote for something. I was upfront about it.

Because I understand that a lot of time, people, just general mom, Joe and Susie Alaska out there, they don't always have the full picture of what's going on. Because they're busy! They're not really paying attention to a lot of things. Maybe the details. Maybe they read the headline. Schools are going to fail. Dogs and cats living together. Children are going to die. Maybe they saw the headline.

And so they tell their legislators, well, you've got to prevent these childrens from dying. These childrens, you can't let them die. You must protect the childrens. Sometimes you have to be the adult in the room. and again like I said before even if you want to support, and fund education. The biggest question to me was, why did you lock it in in perpetuity? The vote was 46 to 14. 46 to 14. Now, there's a significance to that.

because there's two different overrides going on here. There's the override, there's the veto of the bill itself, HB 57, which requires a... 40 member vote threshold to override. And then there's a second Level. which is where he would go to actually veto, line item veto, the funding. Because you could pass the bill, and then he could line item veto the actual funding component of the bill out of the budget itself.

and that has a higher threshold. That's got a 75% threshold, so they would need to have 45 votes. So yesterday was a warning and a message to the governor. Not only do we have the 40 votes to override you, which again, the first override of a sitting governor in 20 years, but we have the 45 votes to override you on the funding. I don't know if this is a FAFO moment or what they're trying to do. Bye.

I mean, maybe now they've adjourned, maybe the governor just waits to the last day and then vetoes the funding anyway. They won't be able to take that up until... Unless they call themselves into a special session or just something like that. And they've shown no interest in that. They adjourned a day early.

They can't take that up to the first day of the session if they don't do it in a special session. They've got, what is it, five days? Kevin, correct me if I'm wrong, but they've got five days from the beginning of the next half of the session. override that veto but by then we'll be six months into the year we'll already have been done with the first semester of school But it was a warning to the governor. So who... And remember, they didn't have the vote. I mean, as far as on paper.

If you look at it, you know, Republican minorities in both bodies with a bipartisan majority in both bodies. You know, if you just looked at it on a majority-minority basis, they didn't have the votes. So who jumped ship? Who in the legislative bodies, the House and the Senate, who voted to override the governor in this regard? Mia Costello, the House Minority Leader, voted to override the governor. saying that it was just a difference in opinion.

Now, she's a teacher. She's a former teacher. So, I mean... am i surprised by that not really Anchorage Republicans David Nelson and Julie Colom both voted for it. Cologne, not surprised, because she is very much, although she's been a bulldog on budgetary items in many ways, she kind of... She kind of showed me where her thought process was when she voted for all the child care subsidies and tax credits and things like that.

I think that there's a fundamental difference between me and her on what the authority and what government should be taking care of. Right? Nice lady. Love her to death. Think she's sweet. Super smart. but wrong on this. David Nelson? You know, I think David was just... Probably listening to his constituents, Catterwall. Probably didn't give it much deeper thought than that. I don't know. Ketchikan Republican Jeremy Bynum voted for it.

And he is, you know, it's kind of odd because he came along after Ortiz was gone and... you know people are like oh they're gonna get another they're gonna get a republican And he has never struck me as somebody who is what I would consider to be a true fiscal conservative based on some of the things and comments that I've read and things. I've never, never, never talked to him, never interviewed him. Would love to do so.

but just, again, not a surprise that Jeremy Bynum from Catcher Can voted for it. A little surprise, that Bill Elam from the Kenai Peninsula voted in favor of it, I thought that he would probably toe the line in the other direction. Justin Ruffridge also voted for it. So both House members from the Middle Peninsula. voted in favor of this which is I guess a little disappointing. In my mind. Eagle River Republican Dan Sadler voted for it. Again, Dan is a nice enough guy, but again,

He kind of goes along to get along with the crowd, so not surprising there. The big shock to me, well, shock, I keep using the word, but I guess... I don't have the finesse today for the words that I'm looking for. I want to parse it down a little bit deeper, but the one that was more surprising to me... was Will Stapp from Fairbanks, who has been a bulldog this entire session.

on how do we pay for things. Well, where's the funding for that? Where's the money? How are we going to pay for it? He's He's been on that. We've had him on the program a couple of times talking about it. And I have been, although he and I disagree on some different things, that was one of the things that I've been most impressed by. And it seems like in the end. He just... was like, okay, threw his hands up in the air and just said, okay, we'll just do it.

And again, I would be so much more forgiving to all of these people if they had moved to do this funding outside of the formula, the BSA, the funding formula. COMMITTING future legislators to having to spend this money year after year. Now, the argument will be, well, no, they can always just change it. Well, there is the theoretical and then there's the practical, right?

In theory, sure, you can't bind one legislature over to another. But the practical, political application, the implications of touching the BSA down the road... I mean, it's almost like the new third rail of politics. We used to think that the dividend was the third rail and then it got touched all to hell. And now we've got the BSA. I mean, we could be hemorrhaging money and everything else and the bank account could be running dry. Don't you dare talk about changing and dropping the BSA.

So I'm really, really disappointed in some of these votes. On the Senate side, Jesse Bjorkman, of course, he was going to vote for it. He's a teacher. Rob Yount works with a lot of the kids in the schools and the coaching. And so he had already told us early on that he wanted to see a change in this now. Again, I don't remember if we talked about whether it should have been inside or outside the BSA, but Rob Yunt voted to override it as well. James Kaufman.

He voted to override it. No comment from him. I mean, of course, I can't even get him on. I've never been able to get him on the program. Doesn't want to come on. He and Rauscher, same kind of thing. Neither one of them want to come on to talk about, no, we don't want to do that. We don't want to talk to you. We don't want to talk to the constituency. We just don't want to. Okay. And then Mike Kronk, who again, another teacher, who...

He said a lot of right things when we interviewed him here just three, four weeks ago. But when it came down to that question of, would you support putting it inside or outside the BSA? And I explained the reasons why I was asking it. Because it commits us in perpetuity. He vacillated. He didn't want to commit one way or the other. which told me that he wanted to put it inside the BSA and just didn't want to say so. Anyway. So we've added another $200 million to school spending.

We're now at, whatever we are, $2.4 billion in education spend in the state. And we already know that next year it's going to be even worse. They've already said 700. The quote from the... The quote from... Where is it? I'm sorry. I'm looking for the... I'm looking for the comment from the, oh, it was in my news brief this morning. The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District says the $700 million still, or the $700 BSA increase.

still won't make up for their loss of spending through inflation and everything else. The bill, the ink on the veto override is not even dry, and they're already setting it up for the fight. for next session for January. $700. It's not even going to fix our purchasing power. They're coming back, folks! It'll be another $1,000 that they want on top of that BSA. Another $1,000. Which will mean another, what, $400 million?

Three, four hundred million dollars on top of that. That'll be a half a billion dollar increase. In perpetuity. And your... And your... Yeah. I'm disappointed. disappointed, not surprised, but disappointed. Let's put it that way. Now it's left up to the governor to see what he does because he could still overwrite it.

i mean he could i mean that would be giving them the finger because they potentially could override it in they could he could still veto it they could potentially override that in a special session or at the beginning of the next half of the session but It would still monkey with their monkey. What's he going to do?

I don't know i don't know i mean again the only spark of sunshine in this whole thing is that apparently we're going to be spending less this year than next year than we did this year. Again, not by choice, but because... There's just no more money. All right. And don't forget on Monday, it's Memorial Day. And we will be off for that day. We'll have alternate programming on Monday. So just a reminder, because it's Memorial Day early this year.

The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense, Liberty Base, Free Thinking Radio. We're broadcasting live through a series of tubes. 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 Live and MichaelDukesShow.com. Okay. Um... can you guys see this here can you guys see this little chat window here does that work for you guys

I don't know if you can see that. I don't know what you're seeing on your screen. This is what's showing on my screen. There's a little chat widget here. It's a new thing that I thought I'd try out today. I don't know. I don't know if I like it there or not. I still like the big bar. I don't know. I know there's a lot of you that are watching at home on your big YouTube, watching it on your big TV or whatever. Maybe this helps you keep up. I don't know. But if you like it, let me know.

It's a new widget. I got to move stuff around in my thing here. I got to do some stuff here. uh because it takes up where my my logo normally is the logo is normally there behind it so there you go like that but i took the logo out so that we could see Charlie says I can see it, but I can't read it. Charlie, where are your glasses? Okay. Sorry, that was mean. I'm way, way far behind here. Let me see what's going on here. Did you see how Donna is killing it in D.C.?

If Alaska had kept on an arduin, we might actually be thriving instead. We let real leadership walk, and now she's in D.C. getting things done in record time. I didn't see her discoveries. Doge, you might want to hit me with it. Chris says, that's the sound of the wild succubus, am I right? Yes. Yes, it is. Say please. Absolutely. Um... I'm going through here. Oh, we can see your integrated chat window. Cave? To what pressure?

Cave to what pressure? Your same team party governor used to veto. In no way are you expected to override. Yeah. I mean, again, what pressure other than, I guess, from your constituencies, listening to all the bitching and moaning and complaining from everybody out there because the school districts were telling you how all the children were going to die because they didn't get the money that they needed.

Yeah. Yeah, Jeff Landfield was shocked that they ended on time yesterday. I saw a bit of that video. He was. He was shocked. Ruffridge and Bjorkman voted just exactly how they were told to vote by their handlers. The NEA expected nothing less. Um... I heard the vetoes, said Barbara. The emails were two to one for the override.

Yeah, I think David Nelson, you know, again, I thought he was a little more principled than that, but we'll see. Cindy said Elam sounded like he was brainwashed when she talked to him yesterday. Terry said she's disappointed in Stapp. Yeah, I mean, I just felt like he was really one of the stalwarts, you know, who was, I felt like he was really calling the, you know, he was really seeing the bigger picture of how do we pay for it all.

Um... Um... unfavorable opinion here says melissa i don't agree hp 57 is perfect I agree outside the formula would have been fine, but if he line out and vetoes, that's scary for Fairbanks. We've done the work up here and pay the price for idiocy and making a bill and not listening to the governor fully suck. Depending on how much he could be vetoed, we could see more schools closed due to deficit. It's true. It's true. The Alaska legislature never fails to disappoint.

Yeah. Disappointing for sure. I'm so far behind here. Let's see. I can see it. See it. Can't read. Okay, finally I'm now caught up to when I was asking about the deal. Anchorage, she said, yep, they have the most legislators for the area and the most Democrat legislators and the most legislators in the majority. Not surprising they are Anchorage-focused. I said that in response to many bills in transportation. Can't vote for this. It's all about anchoring.

Well, I see Willikowski has put the boots to you on the other side of that, huh? holding up your Port McKenzie rail extension bill that had bipartisan, wide bipartisan support, killing it in the rules committee. He must really hate you, Kevin. I mean, it just must be, just nobody gets it. Nobody gets it. No Republican gets a good pass on anything throughout there. Jack? Uh...

Jim, did you say you're just a few short hours away from retirement? Is that what you're saying? Is it Happy Retirement Day? God that sounds good. Sounds like fun. You know, that sounds like amazing. All right, let's get back to it. Here we go. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty Based, Free Thinking Radio. Like, share, subscribe, bring the bell. Let's do this thing. The Michael Duke Show. Left versus right. don't think it means anything.

First and foremost, let's get the important stuff out of the way here. Happy retirement day to Jim in the chat room. Today is his retirement day. What we like to call around here Freedom Day. You know, I mean, I don't know. I'm consigned myself and I'll probably never retire. But, you know, congratulations. Congratulations out there. I'd love to. I'm happy for you. And happy birthday to Barbara. Today's Barbara. She says it's the big six six.

The Big 660. No, that's KFAR. It's the Big 66 today for Barbara. Congratulations and happy birthday, Barbara. Happy birthday. Alright, well, we're just kind of going through the... I mean, we just kind of went through all the different votes. Sarah Vance actually had a... She had a pretty good comment. I'm looking for the article. So many, so many windows open right now. Sarah Vance had a good comment. She originally had voted...

She originally had voted to approve HB 57, but she voted against overriding the governor's veto. along with Jubilee Underwood and Wasilla and Alexi Moore, both from Wasilla. They, Moore and Underwood, both said they were trying to follow the will of their constituents. So their constituents, and again, just proving one more time. that the Valley still holds the championship for the most conservative area in the state.

They're not as red down here on the peninsula. It's the one downside to moving down here on anything else is that they're not quite as conservative as I was like here in many ways. But, you know, we'll live with it.

voted for it, but against overriding the veto. She said, I made a decision a couple of weeks ago not to override, seeing that the majority was not even considering giving the governor his policy request, and really what Republicans have been waiting for quite some time to make education more accessible to all public school students. She said she was also focused on the state's finances, continuing, I'm also very, very concerned about our budget. We are in a deficit of $200 million.

And that's also the increase right now. I want to fund inside the formula, but right now I think we're just in a bind on what we can do. So, I mean, she voted against it. I mean, I would prefer until we have a more stable fiscal situation that we don't put anything inside the formula. Because again, there's so much uncertainty as to where we're going as a state fiscally. then it doesn't make any sense to encumber future legislators with a guaranteed payout that they have to pay.

Everybody should have to justify their expenditures in state government. Everyone. should have to justify their expenditures every year on an ongoing basis. There should be no free lunch. There should be no, we got this last year, so we're going to get it this year. So... I mean, I guess this is... We should not be putting it inside... The formula. Until we're sure what the fiscal outlook is going to be for more than one single year. One single year.

It's, I mean, it's astonishing. We have no fiscal plan. So how do we fix that? We're going to run from one fire to another trying to put it out. Again, I'm always reminded of the Pirates of the Caribbean where they're going to rock the ship so they're running back and forth from one side of the boat to the other to try and rock the ship over. That's kind of the state of Alaska. Feast to famine. Feast to famine. Feast to famine. No long-term plan to get where we need to go.

And it's just astonishing to watch. And then to see the Senate president say, well, our plan is to 75-25 to see it immediately hand-grenaded the next year. or now we're, you know, whatever we are, 82, 18, 83, 17. So much for your long-term fiscal plan. Thanks so much for that! What was left undone, though? Well, there's no election overhaul bill.

which I guess we can thank our lucky stars on. There's no campaign finance bill. Neither one of those got it through. There was no pension bill. Thank goodness for that. And there were no bill, there was the S-Corp, the C-Corp, S-Corp, the yunt tax thing. That didn't go through. So... I mean, I guess, you know, I guess those are the good news is the good news is for what we're looking at here. If you want to see the positives.

I guess the fact that we have a smaller budget overall, I mean, as it's written right now, I've got to keep going back to that caveat. When you've got a $6.5 billion budget and then you have to come back with a $200 million supplemental because you overspent,

To me, that's always kind of the sleight of hand, the economic sleight of hand, the accounting. Some accountant is probably rolling over in their grave back there going, that's not how you do accounting, but this is how the legislature does it. Well, we spent the money, so now you've got to true up. Right? That's how the governors and the legislature do. We spent the money. By the way, we need an extra $200 million. You guys will have to find it somewhere.

So while we got a $6.2 billion budget passed, compared to last year or this current year 6.5 billion it sounds pretty good but I'll hold my breath until I see what the supplemental is in January. And mark my words, if it's a half a billion dollar, if it's a half a billion dollar supplemental budget in January, I'm going to lose my mind. Well we were what we were under. Maybe the governor should just veto a bunch of it. Maybe he should.

I mean, he has vetoed stuff out of every budget every year that he's been in office. That's been a good thing in a lot of ways. Maybe he vetoes it by half. You know. rob says half the supplemental was extra spending that wasn't anticipated the other half was from a deficit from dropping oil prices i understand I understand where it comes from. I just find it a little hilarious that it happens every year. Every year. Rob also says the BSA is now 6-6-6-0. That's a little ominous. But it's true.

There's a lot of sixes in there. I'm a little nervous as to what's going on. A little nervous. All right, Mike Shower's coming up next. We're going to get his full take on it. It should be a wild ride. Tune in next for the Shower Hour of Power, the Michael Duke. Oh man. So no full PFD. Did you think there was going to be a full PFD? I mean, did you think that that was gonna happen? I mean, I hate to be that guy, but really? Did you think that that was going to happen?

Um... I don't know All right, let's... I guess we'll get things ready to go for, uh... Let me see, what do I got here? I got things to do. I got things to do, people to do, things to see. That came out weird, but I'm happy with it. Come on. I got to pull this together. I should have done this before the show, but I didn't, you know, because... Shut up. Okay. Let me fix this here. And we'll do that right there. And we'll do that right there. Look at that. That's perfect. Beautiful.

I do good work. Don't let anybody tell you any different. Oh, okay. Alright, I got it all squared away. Got it all squared away! Terry says, the Alaska legislature has finally given me an ulcer. Finally managed to give me an ulcer. You know, I get wrapped up, you know, I get wound up on it on the show. But once the show's over, I feel like I've expended my energy on it, and I'm like, okay, now I'm okay. You know, it is what it is. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Um...

Okay, let's see what this looks like. I'm going to fade this over here. I need to change that a little bit, don't I? Should I shorten it up? I can't change how this box works. Maybe I'll just leave it. We'll leave it for now. We'll leave it for now. We'll come back to it. Let it out, Mike. You know, I mean, here's the thing, guys. Life's too short. Life is too short to get so wound up about it that it just consumes your every waking moment. There are too many other joyful things in life.

So I'll have my say. I'll get my rant on. And, you know, I'll chastise those that I feel like need to be chastised. I'll make my point. And then I'll put it out of my mind and move on to other things that are more productive and more joyful. That's my decision. Why? I made that decision a few years ago because I was a very angry person. About 15 years ago my wife came to me and said, You're scaring the children.

You're scaring the children. You're not pleasant to be around. You're making me unhappy. Because you are so angry all the time. And I had to have a real deep moment of self-reflection because I was angry and I was unhappy. I was unhappy. with everything. Mostly, and it had to do with all the political stuff. I came down to the point to where I had to make a decision of what I would get angry about, how to vent that, and then how to let it go.

And so I know a lot of you in here kind of eat and breathe and sleep all this political stuff and everything else. And, you know, every post you make on Facebook or everything, it always has to do with something. I don't do that anymore. Because it was destroying me. So while I may rant on the show,

While I may rant on the show about something, rest assured that when the show's over, I'm done thinking about it because I've already given consideration. I've done the show prep. I've talked to you. I've had my say. And now I let it go. And I move on to the next, I move on to the things that bring me more joy. That's how I live my life today. And it's much better. Yeah. Let it go. Let it go. Becky says, don't scare the children, Michael. This is Becky Schwanke.

Scare the adults. The CBR draw did not pass, so the state's backstop for the $200 million deficit will come from ADA and then from the Higher Education Fund. So much for a majority commitment to energy development or our high school graduates. Choices, choices. I mean...

Why am I not shocked? How many buckets of money are there out there, Becky? That was my question when they first, when they used that as a contingency. You know, my first question was, how many more buckets of money are out there with hundreds of millions of dollars in them? then maybe we should be scraping some of those out. Hey Mike, you ready to go? Okay. Alright. Hold the line. I'll be right back to you. I got ranty. Or semi-ranty. Or expo- Expositive.

I had a lot of exposition that I had to get through. We gotta go. Common Sense, Liberty Mace, Freethinking Radio. 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 Dukes The greed 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 BS.

It is time to get a new perspective. We know. what you need, and we've got Just the Cure. And prepare for a steaming hot cup of freedom. Show streaming live across the world 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 hour two of this the first day of the post session

The first day of post-session here in the state of Alaska. Welcome to it, and thanks for coming in and joining us here today. In just a second, we're going to be joined by State Senator Mike Schauer. Who is going to come on for his first post-session shower hour of power. To give us a recap, tell us all the dirty secrets of what went on in Juneau. It's...

It's pretty maddening out there. It's pretty crazy. We're going to talk with him here in just a moment and get his full rundown. Quick couple pieces of housekeeping. Housekeeping. First and foremost, Monday is Memorial Day. And I will be taking the three-day weekend because reasons. 60 hours a week, 70 hours a week is just, I'm getting older, folks. I can't do it quite as much as I used to be able to do it.

So I'm taking every excuse I can to take a day off and sleep in a little bit, okay? So just FYI. Alternate programming all over the place. In the interior, the peninsula, down in ADAC, Kodiak, everywhere else. It's going to be alternate programming on Monday. And we will be back Tuesday with Brad Keithley. Just FYI. So that's the first piece of housekeeping. Secondly, if you'd like to support the show,

you can go over to the Common Sense Core and help support the show. You get access to our private Facebook page and more. For the price of a cup of coffee a month, you can help put... Shoes on my kids' feet, man. My kids need shoes. or just help us buy more good equipment and everything else to make it better around here. Anyway, you can go to michaeldukeshow.com and click on Join the Corps, or you can go straight to patreon.com slash michaeldukeshow.

Final piece of housekeeping tomorrow on the program. Sarah Montalbano will be joining us in hour one. And we'll be talking about energy. including this proposal for the Susitna Watana Dam and what's going on in other parts of the country as they move more and more towards solar and wind and what it's doing to the rest of their power grid and why we shouldn't get caught in that trap.

And then in hour two, Rob Myers, Senator Rob Myers will be joining us and we will be having his recap, which will be a little bit of a different perspective from Mike. And it should be interesting. So there you go. All right. That's the housekeeping. Let's get to it, shall we? Let's dive into it. for the shower hour of power state senator mike shower joins us right now good morning my friend how is you today how are you been how's it how's it feel now for the madness to be

Well, mostly over, I guess I should say. I have one more for you. freedom that's right man get me out of here yeah you're ready to calgon take you away is that what's uh is that what's going on here you're all ready I am so ready to leave this place after four months. I would say you have no idea, but you have at least an idea of, oh my gosh. Yeah, it's got to be a struggle for sure.

um so mike uh what um um you know that this this Yesterday's vote, I'm not shocked, mildly surprised at some of the votes. There was a no, I mean, it was eight minutes. I got the text message eight minutes after nine that the vote was done. so i mean this must have been like the shortest the shortest joint session in history.

Give us the rundown here. What was going on beforehand? Because again, Gary Stevens made a comment in the beacon, I think, that said, oh, when I knew that we had 46, I knew this was going to be a good, you know, I mean. This obviously was done beforehand, so give us your... What was going on ahead of time? What was the buzz? What was everybody talking about? And then walk us through the votes and your thoughts on what this does for us and where we sit on this.

well the first thing i'll answer you know listen for a little bit here and uh representative schwanke's comment about the four pots of money because there's kind of four that are really readily available to do this CBR, ERA, each of those has somewhere in the ballpark of about 3 billion left from 30 billion over the last 10, 11, 12 years. But you got the CBR, the ERA, and then the higher ed fund and ADA.

have enough money you could just straight draw them the rest of them you know they can scoop some here and there some reallocations but those are the big four They chose, from what I can tell, to make it painful, to make it harder to twist arms, I think, to use ADA and the higher ed funds.

so that uh you know some legislators would vote for it because i think their thought process as well some legislators don't want to hit ada because they you know at least put some money into investment or you know investment in certain projects around the state And of course, you know, education is such a hot topic. Nobody would want to touch the higher education fund, right?

you notice how there is also pce but that wasn't touched because that's a favorite of a couple you know very powerful legislators so pce wasn't uh touched for any money even though there's a better part of a billion dollars in that So you can say there's more than just four.

but they picked ones i think they thought would be the most painful and ones that were not their own pet uh not project but pet fund so the right answer michael and the correct answer should have been the cbr straight up that's really kind of what it's for that's not what they did and The House minority made a choice. We're not going to give that vote. And I think that they have failed, my guess is.

to win that ideological battle because i believe just listening to a couple house members make comments that feel like Fine. That's the game you're going to play. We're going to take money out of ADA and money comes out of higher ed fund. Oh, well, it's not the House Minority's fault that the House and Senate finance. committees decided to do that. That was their choice. They could have made it a simple CBR draw if they didn't. So, whatever.

um the money comes out of those that's not on the house minority for voting that's on the Senate and House Finance Committees for doing so. Right. There it is. Well, can you explain for a second, just so folks know, give us your explanation of what the ADA Investment Bank is? And what the higher ed fund does, just so people know, because I don't think the average citizen probably has no idea what the ADA investment bank is and has no idea what exactly the higher education fund does.

Yeah, so ADA, Alaska Industrial Development Association. Basically, it's... Think of it in one way almost like a little bank. Alaska's got lots of little pots of money. And one of them is ADA. And what ADA does is every year, based on how much money, you know, they've got hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, that is in their account, for lack of a better word. and they get dividends based on how much, just like you would if you had a big bank account.

And a portion of that they give back to the state that just goes to the UGF. It's not a lot. 12 million or something or you know i think is the maximum based on the percentage and statutes 12 and a half million something like that um that goes into the uh the just end of the ugf the rest of it they go out and look for projects you know west is like that west other things whatever it may be and they'll take money and it's ada has had over the years not a great reputation almost like

uh its own little empire where it has not necessarily invested in either good projects or nothing at all i don't say nothing but it has there's been a lot of tension with ada and so There are some people that don't mind spending money for me at all. There's some people that just want to get rid of them flat out. Everybody has an opinion on it. But that's what they're for.

is to find projects in Alaska and because we have money available through them to put money up for things. I will say it seems like they're getting a little better. under new management so maybe that train is uh you know picking up steam a little bit in a good direction however um that's where some of the angst come from and that's what ada is So I think part of leveraging that was thinking, well, a lot of people don't like it, so we'll just take money from them.

and so there you go anyways that's the answer for that one but back to your whole question of how we got here this whole education thing as you know has been going on almost since the beginning of session we've talked about it a couple times you know, the governor started that, uh, and isn't ending here. I mean, I'll just, I'll throw that out there. Yeah, it's not done. Oh, it's not done.

i can promise you that that's the very very short summary he started the working group went on for a couple weeks there was some hope thought we would get some solutions with some policy and funding there was general agreement in the body like you know regardless of what people think some people are like zero money some people want to give them a billion dollars you know i mean so there's a gamut of opinions

But there was a general acknowledgement in the building that there needed to be some funding and that there needed to be policy. And there were people on both sides or some people just give me policy and some people were all funding. That went over several months. You know that we went back and forth. We've talked about it. And then once the final decision was made,

weeks ago. I was finally part of that because we had other people negotiating for our caucus. You know, four caucuses had their negotiators. And we thought it had basically fallen apart. And then there was a deal struck by a few people getting in there and pulling levers and just putting their fingers in the pie over a weekend a few weeks back. There are four weeks now since that happened.

And then it came up on Monday. This Monday in the Senate, I should say. We thought, okay, we have a deal. Looks like it was supposed to be enough of the governor's stuff that he was going to be. not perfect, don't necessarily like it all, but, you know, in other words, not enough policy, but fine, I'll live with it. And there was a vote. And then that whole thing unraveled. We realized that they put language, the people that were negotiating made some mistakes.

It wasn't the shallows, the maids weren't correct, which meant that some of the policy stuff wasn't in there. The literacy grants weren't funded. I mean, it just became a mess. And then we had another vote on it and that got more contentious back to the House.

And eventually we figured, well, we need to. The governor's like, well, I don't like that now. And I didn't like it anymore, you know, because it's just kind of like Darth Vader. I was making fun of it. It's like in Lando Calrissian and whichever Star Wars that was. This is not the deal I agree to. And Darth Vader goes, I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it farther. And that's kind of what I was watching. This is not the deal I signed up for. This is getting worse.

And so I actually got directly involved at that point and a couple others. And we tried, you know, talking to the governor. We did talk to the governor, but we tried to work with some members in the Senate majority.

and said hey you know the governor says if i can just get these other little policy things and that wasn't much to be very fair it was a very small few things he said if i get that it's enough you know i don't like that you know i want more you're right and i'd like a smaller you know slightly smaller bsa but if that's what it's going to take it'd be this here um and it was some policy things and very very small stuff that should have been in there anyway

And let's put in, and Senator Cronk and I said, we're working with different people, including the governor's shop. Let's put in 22 million from the CBR with the CBR draw we're having to make sure for a year. that the literacy grants and CT were at least being funded and off to the races. So we tried that shot down. Nope, we're not doing that. gave the little sheet of paper that had a few, very few small changes to get in there, gave it to the majority.

several members of the majority, including one in leadership. Yeah, yeah, compromise is great, but ultimately, no, we're not doing anything. We're not moving off our position. They could have gotten an amendment within a day. I've waited a week. Every day I'm like, hey, got anything? Got anything for me? Got anything? A week later, not really sure. He's got some problems. I'm like, what problems? You already looked at it all.

Nothing, nothing. After two weeks, I realized, oh, the deal's off. They're not going to do a thing. And then we're all talking. And I realized at that point, Michael, that was the gig was up at that point. The majorities were dug in. Both Democrat controlled majorities weren't going to move in.

Bottom line, just like the Department of Agriculture debate a month and a half, two months ago, you remember that one. They're just not going to give this governor a win on anything. They're not going to give the Republican minorities a win on anything. um and they were just dug in and they're like we're not moving this is it is what it is and so i started counting boats and um

the votes we knew based on just pressure and education of people's different districts that there was going to be enough votes to override. Didn't know how many. but we were confident for weeks now that there would be enough to override the governor's veto and it's not unheard of i mean it doesn't happen often but you know even here we've had a few i'm not with this governor but there have been overrides in the past in other states it happens but

Obviously, I'm not thrilled about it. I voted to uphold his veto. I don't think it's nearly enough policy. more policy and more solid things in there, Michael, with a reasonable BSA, I would have voted for it. But it wasn't enough. It didn't get there. It failed, in my opinion. So that's the ultimate thing. Everybody took their vote. There will be another one that's going to be over that tax bill.

that at this point we don't even know if it gets enough money to fund the things that are in it. It's going to be a year and a half probably before we get anything out of it. the governor is going to veto that i'm confident of it probably soon after we're gone now that we're gone which means that will happen in january another veto battle and I'm confident because of how they set this up and everybody dug their heels in and nobody would compromise that little bit.

that he's probably going to line out and veto some money out of that bsa and he's going to trim that too so that's not over and we may have a veto battle over that in january so this entire thing because some people just dug their heels in you know is going to be multiple veto battles that's going to take the oxygen out of the room um and by the way because we didn't solve it well

Or ultimately, as usual, the ones that are going to suffer are going to be the children because the policies aren't all going to be there that are going to be giving them options in a better form. The money is not all going to be there that some schools do need.

they don't all need it there's tail wagging the dog you know this i'll be down here in a sec this anchorage right all this about anchorage we could cut anchorage out of this we would be in a much better position um but they're so big and they just kind of rule the roost with all this so ultimately we failed to get the best package um all of the funding that's needed for certain district schools is not going to be there

Once again, Mike, we took lemonade and turned it back into lemons. And not very good ones at that, that's for sure. All right, State... State Senator Mike Schauer is our guest. We're coming up on the break. We're going to take a quick one when we come back. We're going to talk about the overall.

I don't know if we should score it or not, but the overall session from Mike Schauer, we'll get his take on it and see what next year is going to look like. That's something we're going to cover before the end of the show today as well. Because we already know. Have you thought this year was not pretty? Next year, The Michael Luke Show. Common sense, liberty-based, free-thinking.

Running on 100% pure beard power. Oh, also some coffee. We dip our beard in coffee. Ha, nice beard. The Michael Duke Show. Okay, State Senator Mike Schauer is our guest. I see Kevin and Frank both just said in the chat room, apparently Louise Stoots just filed to run for the Senate seat that Gary Stevens is going to vacate. That should be fun. Well, that won't change the dynamics of the Senate because they joined their democratic coalitions all the time, so that won't come a perspective of...

you know, changing whether the Republicans, even though there's a majority of us in the Senate, would be a Republican-controlled Senate or Democrat-controlled Senate. That's a wash. Yeah. Well... Except for maybe we get a better candidate in the House. I don't know if that's possible coming out of Kodiak. There's one I've heard of. I've heard of a person down there that's...

A candidate that is more Republican. Somebody that, in other words, would not just go down there with an R in front of their name and go right to the Democrats. That's what I'm hearing. We'll see. But I have heard there's somebody down there. that is potentially going to file for that, that would be...

a Republican that would stick with Republicans. So we'll see. But I've heard of one. We'll see what happens if it comes to depression. That would be a net positive if that's the case. That would be a net positive. So we'll have to see.

We've got to have one of the bodies, Michael, because after next November, if you get a moderate governor, um team in there and both bodies controlled by democrats like this it might as well it's up from my perspective and i'm not being overly facetious but a little it might be time to start thinking about packing your bag If you get a moderate governor in the state with this legislature as it is right now, we will California the state within one session.

All of the stuff, the taxes, the FD is gone. The taxes are coming hot and heavy. Industry is going to go to heck with this place. The schools are going to rule everything. uh divine benefits for all my state friends it's going to be within one session michael it's done at uo california this place and i It would take years of a Republican governor and controlled legislature just to undo the damage, much less to do anything good. I am praying hard.

that we at a minimum get one of the bodies under control and frankly the only one i think you have a lot of hope in based on the personalities and who may or may not change out that that's probably going to have to be the house in my opinion i don't think the senate There's not a lot of hope from what I say that the Senate changes hands with people that are going to join together as Republicans as opposed to what we're seeing right now.

there's a good chance the house gets that back um and if we do then you at least have a counterweight to the insanity of turning Alaska into California. We'll see. There's a lot of, you know, from now to next November, that's like a century in political years. It seems like. uh with everything we got going on i just had a question and it just flew right out of my mind um

the whole thing with the makeup of the legislature. I mean, how relevant do you think my, you know, I had the charter of changes where I said, you know, we need to change the players, change the venues, change the rules and change the fund. And how relevant do you think that is today? I mean, because we've changed out, I think Rob did that, Rob Myers did the numbers, I think he said 63% or something of the legislature has been changed out in the last five, six years. And yet, here we sit.

How much of that is still relevant? I mean, what of any of those? I mean, I don't know if changing the players even needs to belong on the list anymore because it just seems to... Changing the venue would be good. I think moving the legislative session onto the road system could help. It would help a little. Yeah, but I mean... What is the solution to this? Is it a strong gubernatorial candidate? Is it a

Is it a changing of the guard in the legislature? What is the solution in that? And I guess we only got 30 seconds. So give us a quick tease and I'll ask you again here on the other side. Very quick. Yes, if you've got a super red legislature, but just what I will say to that is I.

because the districts are all different. You're not going to get a legislature full of Matthew Republicans, for example. So even if you change some of the players out, they're probably going to be somewhat similar to the one that left. So I don't know that that answer in and of itself will solve the problem. Okay. We're ready to go here. We're 10 seconds out, so we'll rejoin. Mike Schauer is our guest.

Don't forget to like and share. Don't forget, if you haven't checked out our Patreon page to become a member of the Common Sense Corps, you probably should do that right now. Well, not right now, but soon. Public enema number one. Oh, wait, sorry. Enemy. Public enemy number one, which... On the other hand, he's a little bit of a pain in the Michael Duke show. All right. Welcome back to the program. State Senator Mike Schauer is our guest.

And we are continuing our discussions, kind of a post-session recap. I was just asking Mike, you know, There's so many issues going on in the state. He talked a little bit about the Californication, potentially the Californication of Alaska and what could be coming on. And a lot of this comes back again to...

This lack of a vision of a fiscal vision and lack of a future. And I put out the charter of changes here five or six years ago and said, these are the things that I think that need to happen. You know, we need to change the players. We need to change the venue, moving the legislative session onto the road system. We need to change the rules.

no more binding caucus, no more conflict of interest shenanigans, and we needed to change the funding. We needed to go to zero-based budgeting would be ideal, but even if not that, maybe a five-year rolling average. to start our budget process off. And so I asked Mike, you know, Mike, what do you, you know, are these still parts of the solution? What do you think is?

going to do it and you had some things to say but i wanted you to be able to expound on so those are all good things michael but here's the problem from what i see these are all just my opinions from being here for eight years watching i don't know that a strong governor has as much impact as we want they can have some impact But if you have a legislature, let's go, for example, for the last eight years,

Whatever your opinion may be of Dunleavy, there are many things he has tried to do. But people have to remember that every single year he's had one. or now both legislative bodies controlled by Democrats, even though there's more Republicans, because Republicans keep joining Democrats and empowering them. So you go, well, the governor should do this.

he can't do it if the legislature won't do it or even has override after override and overrides the things he wants to do or tries to do so that can be good, and it's better than not having it, but it's probably not going to change the dynamics that much.

legislative bodies same thing right you go well let's just change the players out the problem is we have changed a majority of them out since i've been there and we're getting the same results in fact in some ways it's even worse because now we have both bodies controlled by Democrats and enough Republicans in each body to join the Democrats to empower them times two.

So there's that. Moving the legislative session, that would be good. Oh, I should go back and say, for those legislators, we change them out. They're coming from district. that tend to elect those types of people. So when people go, let's just change the players, it's been my experience that for the most part, It kind of gets somebody that's not all that different from the previous one.

Not always, but that seems to be the truth more often than not. So, you know, so anyway, it was that. I remember moving the legislative session. Yeah, that would help. But on the road system, a couple of things. I mean, one, the people have more access.

lobbyists wouldn't have such outsized influence um i think you might entice some better people to serve because i mean frankly let's just ask ourselves who in their right mind which makes me question my own sanity wants to spend four months out of every year of their life having to fly from home wherever they are and live here in juno and put up with this chocolate Most people are too smart to do this. And they go, I am a professional doing XYZ, making money. I've got young kids.

You know, if you're 40s and 50s, when we got people that have good experience and are on the step and want to make a difference. They're in the height of their earning years, so they don't want to give up the income. There's a lot of reasons why it makes it hard to get good people to come down here and serve. So yeah, moving the session would definitely help.

there are a lot of people that go i can do that because i could still be home every night i could still you know so that would be another thing you know that you talked about um you know changing to zero-based budgeting would be great and other types of things you know term limits you know there's no lobbying when you no longer legislature legislator there's a number of things like that we could do

and i'm going to highlight the issue here in a minute but we won't because too many people don't want to do it And the very legislators you would have to rely upon to pass the legislation won't pass that kind of legislation because it limits them and their ability to be here forever and have power and do what they want. I will say this one time, that if we as a people in the state of Alaska, that's just what I'm looking at, Mike, you want change.

Probably the way that we're going to have to do this is what the left has been doing to Alaska for some time, and that is figure out a way to have the available money. and the ground. the ground troops for lack of a better word and a command structure to run initiatives. That's how you are going to legislate in the state because the legislature is not doing it.

has no will to do it is in fact in my opinion going the wrong way from a making a better stronger private sector controlled you know state with freedom to a california type state that's the direction we're moving in legislatively so the people are going to have to step up and do it i don't like that but that's what i see you want to you know get rid of rank choice voting we're gonna have to do what we're doing again you have to make an initiative make make it uh

make it so that the people vote on it you want to save the pfd people are going to have to run initiative and they're going to have to do it themselves you want to put a spending limit yeah that's just what i'm saying michael because we won't and we're not And there's no will. And like I said, it seems like we're going the other direction, frankly. Right. That's maybe one solution, but let's be honest.

initiatives are hard and they cost money and it takes some people that are very dedicated and they're not an easy thing to do and the legislature as it will when it's finally forced to act will do something just enough to get it so that the initiative is taken off the ballot so we have some daunting tasks but let's let's go to the last part that gets us here

It's not like Alaska was in the 90s. Back when you can go, we had a super red legislature and, you know, we used to be Democrat many decades ago. Then we became red. We're sliding back towards purple.

The people that are leaving the state, Mike, like we've said many times on your program, are the good blue-collar workers that love America and now hate Bud Light. They're moving out. They're going other places, Idaho, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, states that are booming economically and doing better. that policy is both social stuff as well as just economically.

And a lot of the inflow we are getting, they are coming up from places like Washington, Oregon, and California. Right. Where me reporting on you because you cut your tree down in your yard is okay to them. no freedom, where spending all the money in the public sector is a-okay to them because they have government jobs or they just believe in big government. They're ideologically aligned with that. as opposed to the other side. So you're seeing some dynamic shift.

And ultimately, if that keeps happening, you're going to get more and more purple districts and you're going to get more Democrat type people going to the legislature. So there are some things we may not be able to stop. and if we can't create a robust private sector that's going to bring people up like it did in the 70s and 80s with the oil boom that started swinging the state the other way politically.

and we turn into a big national park and we can't get resource development projects going well michael i don't know ultimately if you can change that i don't know and i'm not trying to be gloom and doom i'm saying i'm just looking at it realistically that's an interesting dynamic shift and we don't have a whole lot to say about that in some cases right we could talk very briefly but i will

as rob mentioned it we had a battle on the floor yesterday over hjr 14 sounds like a simple thing right right just a simple house joint resolution

Kevin McCabe's been working his tail off on this for some time, trying to get the port mackerel extension done. I support him any way I can, but he's been... doing the yeoman's work on it and trying to get it done they go well what's a simple resolution so important for mike i said well most of the time resolution is just a statement they're not law they're just a statement but sometimes michael they become more important let's just say

that when you think about the binding caucus and this is what is so infuriating Yesterday, it was already on the docket. It had made it through the house. How often does this happen? 40 to 0. Unanimous resolution passed the House. 40 to 0. As messed up as the House is. Sent it to the Senate. Sent it ready to go. Sent it in rolls. Was going to be on. And then it got pulled off by the rules chair.

we could have had it up there yesterday probably probably would have been a 20 to 0. our congressional delegation especially nick vegas asked us for this resolution because he's putting together a package and then we have to put the package or he's working on down there but we have to put the package in for christy grant by chrissy grant specifically for the railroad to get that last 30-ish miles of rail done for the point mac rail extension that michael is critical

for infrastructure development for resource development projects throughout the state and going all the way up to the northern rail extension eventually getting us tapped into canada for economic activities for military purposes for backups in case of big things like an earthquake but also all the resource development i.e job

i.e. billions or tens of billions of dollars of investment flowing into the state because lots of people want to do stuff in port mackenzie but we can't do anything till the rail's done right so you got billions of dollars coming into the state or tens of billions over the years oh let's wink wink at the legislature and the legislators that's that's a lot of tax money coming in you get to spend boys and girls um and by the way it's thousands of jobs

so isn't this what we would want to do for the state of alaska they've complained all session about you know they weren't getting enough better money and here we're staring at a grant so you know what happened yesterday it gets pulled off Obviously we're not very happy about that. so i try to out of order pull it out of the committee and just make a motion rule 48 done it before

to have it put right onto the floor so we can vote on it and get it to our congressional delegation because it has to be done in a couple weeks. There's a timeline for this. But do you know what happened, Michael? The thing you and I have been talking about for years, once again, instead of a representative constitutional republic and watching that play out yesterday, I watched an oligarchy again. One person.

and then the power of the binding caucus kept that resolution from being moved to the floor so we could vote on it to get it to our congressional delegation because they asked for it so we can get this grant done, get the rail extension done, and start the economic boom that flows from that.

one person didn't like it there was personal politics at play of keeping it off the floor and because then the senate president goes well i can't roll my rules chair and we all have to follow the binding caucus instead and everybody on the floor minus one person said yeah i like it and i want to vote for it and instead what happened michael we had a 14 to 6 vote for that motion it failed right along the lines of the binding caucus but that was the excuse

while somebody else said well it was you know i was people said some things on facebook and social media and that's what happens here and there were some strange words said yesterday on the senate floor during the debate on this one and after that michael has failed so i'm looking at this and going so the people that say they want investment that was a big no for the unions and contractors and companies and all the alaskans that could get jobs from this the money that comes in that was a big no

And I watched the power that we have put into the hands of just a few people, Michael. And I watched an oligarchy take place on the Senate floor yesterday. And things like that will drive you mad. when you have the ability to do something good and expand economic opportunity and watch it be killed because of the binding caucus i watched it and today on the Senate floor.

And that is the madness. That encapsulates nicely. That's a nice bookend. That encapsulates nicely the madness that is Juno. Well, right now and pretty much. forever. State Senator Mike Schauer is our guest. We didn't get to the actual from before so that's it's fine we're gonna come back to it here He's going to join us in the third segment. We're going to continue with the scorecard for this session. And what does the next session bring? Because they're already saying it's going to be worse.

We'll be back with State Senator Mike Schauer. Listened to by more staffers in Juneau than any other. 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. Alright, State Senator Mike Schauer is our guest. I don't know why you're laughing. No, I just... It's excellent. I mean, this whole deal where...

For some reason, Willikowski's got to be in his bonnet about this bill and doesn't want to see it. And it's the one thing that I believe the federal dollar should be spent on. is infrastructure, because that's the thing we were promised, and that rail line is a critical piece of infrastructure. And yet... all this support and they decide one guy gets his his tail in a twist and uh he says no no not gonna do it

And it's not even him Michael. It's just the fact that one person can be allowed to have that kind of power. to do something so big and just shut down i mean one person literally yesterday name the person whoever it was wouldn't even matter i mean it was the rules chair yesterday but for one person to be able to essentially possibly kill Decade. of economic progress and development in this state is unconscionable to me.

I mean, is this an issue of we just can't let the Republicans have a win on anything? Is that what it got down to? Petty schoolyard politics? i think it was i think there was personal politics at play yesterday yeah i don't know all the ins and outs I just know that, you know, ultimately, he said, I'm not putting on the floor.

And then I'm watching, you know, the Senate finance co-chairs and the Senate president and almost everybody I talked to on the Senate floor. I like it. It's got to go. It's important. I want to do it. Oh, but we got a binding caucus, so I'm going to vote it down. Are you kidding me? I just, like, for once, roll the chair.

hey this is not just somebody's feel-good thing this is not just somebody's personal bill this is economic development for the entire state right this is tens of billions of dollars at stake this is thousands of jobs at stake This is the future of our kids at stake and we're gonna play the binding caucus Have you lost your minds? Yeah. It's a suicide pact. I mean, the binding caucus is a suicide pact. That's exactly what it is. It's insane. Insane.

What was the question, by the way? Yeah, exactly. What was the question? No, I mean, I think you've meandered around to it. That is good. And Harold, you are so stupid sometimes. It's not a railroad to nowhere. It connects to the rest of the rail system. Way to repeat Wilkowski's words there, pal. A railroad to nowhere. You mean that railroad? that connects a vital part. to the interior.

the railroad that would connect the northern rail extension that would connect us to canada that could get us all the way up to the north slope that can bring the parts for the l and j pipeline and forever build it that could allow us to do rail calls for coal and ore all over the state or to move lng you mean that railroad to nowhere or the boondoggle that somebody called yesterday yeah that it just you know those kind of statements i've got no i have no patience for that michael yeah

We have five pages of companies that want to do business in and out of Alaska that are on hold because they can't do it without the rail. A rail to nowhere, huh? You know, it's statements like that. You look at somebody or you're not even worth my time. Yeah, well, there you go. Mike, so you're seeing the governor's race start to shape up a little bit, a little early, but it seems like everybody is jumping in.

I got a chance to interview Bernadette Wilson last week, which was surprisingly pleasant. She's going to be back on here next month to come back on and talk about it. How are you feeling so far about the gubernatorial race? I don't see Mike Schauer in there. I'm wondering when that's going to happen.

I'm sitting here talking to Michelle, and if you're not careful, she's going to reach that radio and grab you by the neck and teach you a lesson. I knew she was listening. I knew that that's not going to earn me any points, but I know everybody's asking. Everybody in the chat room is thinking it. That's all I'm saying. What do you think of the current gubernatorial slate and what do you see happening?

Well, I'll hold judgment because we have a long way to go. Obviously, like I said, 16, 17 months, wherever the heck we're at, that's a century in political years. We'll see. Most of the names that I'm seeing, and I say most just because I know there's a lot more that I'm hearing of than I've declared. There's a lot more that I'm going to probably throw their name in the hat. I have concerns because some of those names are left of center. Some of those names are moderate at best.

you get concerned about who the lieutenant governor is going to be because you know it becomes a ticket and then that goes for things like elections you know i mean What if we get a moderate governor that puts somebody in like the former director of the Division of Elections who's a leftist by ideological stance? and then just doesn't enact good policy or promulgates bad regulations again. I mean, there's a lot at stake here.

I'll be finished in a second and circle back to a few minutes ago. Well, that gets back to having that very same team of things happening that aren't. good with the governor team that we're going to need to block what happens at the legislature so it's i mean next november you're looking at a big titanic shift their names leaving the senate and who the governor is and how the bodies line up michael we could see some significant shifts

Concerns. All right. Well, we'll continue here. Mike Showers, our guest. The Michael Duke Show. Not your daddy. Wait, I'm sorry. Puss down for a second. We were going down. Alright, one final segment. Mike Shower is our guest. It's the first shower hour of power possession here. And we're going to continue. Now it's a recap of the legislative session. I don't know if I want him to score it or what, but overall, I guess overall thoughts on this session. But most importantly, what does the next...

What does the next session, next half of the session look like? Because there are already the warnings. I mean, we were $200 million upside down at the end of this one. The next one, already predictions running into the $1, $1.5 billion range. So, Mike, this session versus next session, give us your thoughts on this.

so look let's go to the bottom lines um i will give credit where it's due now partly the responsibility lays there because this we're the fact we're even in this boat let's baseline it and one of the reasons i talked about that i voted against the budget is that you know we don't have a fiscal plan had we put one in place four years ago we had the fiscal policy working group and a spending cap in place

had we taken the PFD off the table by locking it away, Sunset Commission to help us smartly figure out how to get rid of government programs and start saving some money, you know, things like that. we would be in a much better place might have even enacted some taxes if we had that spending cap place and other things to make sure we were stable right but the point is we haven't done any of it so we continue to just wildly do whatever we want every year based on the money available

we're oil we're petro state that's the way we're doing business just is terrible so but i will say based on what was available to us in that context of the structure thank goodness for the senate finance table raining some of that in because the house went freaking hog wild

there were was that girls gone wild videos back in the day and taped on the beach at spring break i mean they just went hog wild and it was it was a chocolate mess with the house democrats running this michael i mean they made it it was a mocker of it and so to kudos to the fact that they did take a bag of lemons and at least rain to them. That being said, without enacting a fiscal plan, we still have a mess to deal with.

because we won't change it and you know of course we talk about the balanced budget and that's good to an extent except how do we balance it once again we balance it by taking the pfd so we even hung our hat on a 75 25. Like, oh my gosh, we've gone from statutory, blew past the 50-50, and now we're at 75-25, but we couldn't even do that. It's more like an 86-14.

right where only 14 of the um draw from the pomb now because it's no longer it's passed through right um it's going to the dividend it went from 1400 roughly to about a thousand they needed that extra 300 or some million to balance the budget So is it balanced? Yes. Is it a chocolate mess because we don't have the funds we have to?

that we need for the size of the state government the cost of it i should say that's true and we didn't balance it but we balanced it by taking more of the pfd and that ultimately goes back to micro spending plan or no fiscal policy we don't have the things in place to lock it down and how does that affect us well then we have chaos every year because we pull levels all over the place and we end up with this craziness like the cbr draw we talked about first segment

And I look at the investors, I say that we got to, you know, I feel like a broken record every time we talk. Who wants to invest in Alaska when we keep having this problem? And now we got people going, we want to go back and find benefits. You know, we're going to spend more money on this and we're going to throw money at that. And we're going to raise taxes with no plan in place. So businesses, and I talked to some high powered business folks.

this last session i won't say names but some very high power business they're like man you guys i don't know like i'm nervous about investing in alaska because you guys don't have your act together and next year all of a sudden then we got even republicans throwing tax you know proposals on the floor and i got business people looking asking what are you guys doing and i'm looking right back and i have no freaking idea don't ask me i don't know what these people are up to

um we have taxes on the table and spending on the table and when we're down and oil's dropping because trump is opening up american energy dominance again so the price of oil is going to fall which is going to hurt us and then you got people just throwing spending stuff all over the place i'm like do you not understand i mean this is literally like your how you'd run your house budget what would you and i think of anybody or what would they think of us as an individual

in charge of your household with your with your job and your budget and you go hey man you got your house your kids your car your expenses whatever whatever and you're making $100,000 a year, but you're spending about $150,000. You're in debt. You're upside down. You went to your boss and said, I need more money. He said, yeah, pound sand, I don't have it.

And you're out there taking a long vacation to Europe for a month. And then you're coming back and saying, yeah, I can't balance my budget. You guys need to help me out. And everybody looks at you and goes, well, why are you spending more money?

lock it down sucker get it right stop spending money put it away i mean get another job whatever but it's like the state government goes the other way because we want to spend more But even the Senate Finance co-chairs are going, Not only no, but we have less money.

and it's going to get worse next year as oil continues to drop this problem doesn't get better it gets worse and we just added hundreds of millions of dollars to the ticket with more education spending and they want to put divine benefits on there and it's just like and now now what is it what has the conversation inevitably turned to well let's just raise tax

And if we just raise taxes, we'll fix our problem. No, we won't. Ask Myers when he comes on. He made a really good point on the floor last week. He's like, during the debate. He's like, you know what? You guys have already shown us a perfect example, just like I had a perfect one yesterday, the binding caucus and how dangerous it is.

Myers pointed out how bad it is with spending because they go, well, we're his taxes. That'll fix the problem. That's all we need is more revenue. We act like we're a business. We say revenue. i refuse to use the revenue or it's taxes call it what it is it's taxes we're taking money from people to pay for government so but let's think about that problem michael

We did like with this SC tax this internet tax. We're gonna fix this. We're gonna pass some taxes. We have spent that tax dedicated for lack of a better term, that money before we even have it. It's already spent. It's not going into the UGF. It's not going to reduce the deficit. We've already spent every penny of it.

before we even see it that's the problem with doing it this way parkinson's principle for government man the government spending expands to fill up all available money that's exactly what it comes down to So next year, how bad, three minutes, how bad is next year going to be?

Well, if you listen to Senate Finance Co-Chairs and regarding the financial stuff I do, you know, on the broad terms and what they're looking at, because they know the numbers and they were crystal clear, both of them. And I've had long discussions with them this last session about the numbers and where we sat.

and it's going to get worse, right? Because if we add more spending, which is what some people want to do, they want to find benefits, that's going to cost more. They want to put more into education, cost more.

they want to increase this program that program whatever we're about to run ourselves out of the only real penny bank we have piggy bank the pfd we're really really close to putting that to zero so once that happens and once the price of oil drops further which it looks like it's going to do remember that for our ugf budget about a third of it is oil

and we've we've gone well below what they forecast we would be so now that that continues to drop and we don't have a lot of headroom left in the pfd to take it to zero What do you do? I don't know, Michael. There's only really one solid answer you're going to have to tag.

to keep paying for the state government because i've heard people on the floor mostly democrats but some are probably saying we've been flat funding if you look at inflation the government the cost of government hasn't grown at all i'm like well if that's true then explain to me right how we spent 30 billion dollars in savings starting in 2013 through today and the cbr era and sbr the sbr is zero now by the way basically how do we spend that 30 30 billion now we're down to about 6 million

oh and and by the way if we're not overspending and we need to get the money from somewhere why aren't we paying a statutory pft oh that's right because we've had to take it to pay for government Lest I remind you, we're not at 100%. We're not at 50-50. We're at 14% now. Not even at 75-25.

and we had to do that to do what oh that's right balance the budget don't sit here and lie to the public and tell them that the cost of government has not increased If you want to go, the cost of food and fuel and materials and contracts have all gone up. Well, then let's at least deal in reality and be honest about it. They have gone up. It's costing more. I got it. But don't tell me the cost hasn't gone up because you wouldn't have blown through 30 billion almost.

you wouldn't have taken all the almost all of the pfd we wouldn't be talking about raising taxes and we wouldn't have spent more money on government the 24 billion that flowed into the state from covid that we increased programs and people when we told them don't do it because the money's going to drive and it did so that's the summary all right we've spent all the money we put ourselves into a square corner

we're going to have less available next year and it is going to be one heck of a very bumpy ride and until and if we ever get any development moving in the state okay governor mike shower hold the line We'll see you tomorrow. Quit it. Not funny. That's not funny. I think we should all just call you governor from now on. It's just a nickname, Michelle. It's just a nickname. It really doesn't mean anything. We just call him the governor because, you know.

Anyway, State Senator Mike Schauer, I'll give you final thoughts here. I've only got 10 minutes, so don't feel bad here, but I've only got 10 minutes before I have to... Mike, I mean, you're right. It's frustrating to watch this whole thing just kind of shake apart at any given time and see where these things are going and understand that these folks...

It doesn't even seem to care. They just don't even seem to care that this is what's going to be happening to the state. You can see it coming. You can see that the bridge is out. And they just don't even... And they don't even... They don't care. That's kind of my impression. Sometimes you wonder, do you care? I mean, like I said, I had long conversations with Stabman.

and he sees it i mean he's one of the guys he sees that he was trying to within the realms of what you have available but you're looking at all these people that just want to spend money and they seem to think that that that the checkbook is unlimited And then you see things like yesterday where you go, you had a chance. to get us federal money.

for that Christie grant that would potentially help boom the economic growth of the state, which would mean more taxes for you guys to spend or help us balance it out. But you didn't do that. I mean, there's things like this, Mike.

we're back because i had a lot like i said a long conversation with them and he's like we're in trouble he's like we're i don't know how we're going to balance this soon i mean we really are in trouble and when you know you only have a handful of people that are looking at it and see the bridges out and you have a bunch of others and you know conductors and the

steam engine that are going full throttle baby um you're like well how does this work out because remember i said there was a leadership person a few like a month and a half ago or something at a press conference said the private sector doesn't exist without the public sector and i'm like

I can't believe you just said that. You have that exact backwards. But perhaps, Michael, perhaps that statement by a long-serving leader in the Senate Wraps up everything and the legislature in Juneau that is what is wrong with this state. That mindset may explain everything we've been talking about for the last hour. And one of the reasons we are in so much trouble when people like that think that way about government.

It's a rough situation. And again, I don't know what the solution is at this point. I mean, I've been talking about these things for 25 years and... Very little has changed. And most of the changes are not for the better. Let's just put it that way.

so i need money my friend let's get money again we need money and we people willing to do the initiatives and we start governing that way i i if you're if we're going to do anything meaningful other than trying to figure out how to get people to invest in the state and just grow as much as we can to help alleviate the problem like happened in the 70s and 80s with the TAPS pipeline.

Maybe, Michael, one of our shifts needs to be our mindset of banging our head against the wall. Maybe we figure out how to fund ourselves, get benefactors from down south, just like the left is doing with all these initiatives.

maybe we need to figure out how to change the game right if the game if the game's not working with the rules as it is and the players sometimes you look at it and go don't just keep doing the same thing maybe we change the game let's hit them on the flank Maybe we need to start figuring out how to just start running initiatives.

We start throwing candidates into races and make sure that the Democrats can't just get it for free. They have to spend money on races like they do to us. There's things we need to look at, Mike, and start thinking about asymmetrical warfare here.

um and not just do things like we've always done it so there are some things we can do but we need to get a little bit more out of the box a little bit of asymmetry going on and we need to think about how to do that because the standard way is clearly not working for us And so we're going to have to do things differently, I think. And we're going to have to learn how to think and fight that way.

Because I look at it like a war. We are at war, right? Not with bombs and bullets, but with words and actions. ideology um how we treat government versus the private sector how we educate our kids and protect them from indoctrination these things are not small things these are vital to the future of our nation all right

Well, that does it for today, folks. We lost a little bit of the audio, and we will be back with you guys again tomorrow on The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense, Liberty-Based, Free Thinking Radio. Have a great day.