The NE Valley Pachyderm Coalition meeting on Wednesday evening, November 9 was addressed by Senate Majority Leader Andy Biggs and US Representative Ben Quayle.

Senator Biggs talked about a range of topics.

• Pearce recall election – The only reason there was a recall election is that Jerry Lewis collected signatures and submitted them to get on the ballot. If nobody had done that, there would have been no recall election even though the recall signatures had been submitted. Lewis said that if he didn’t do it, then someone else would since an election was inevitable; that is simply not true. Democrats elected Lewis. The legislature will review laws related to recalls to force elections to follow the normal election procedure (a primary and then a general election for partisan offices) in order to prevent people from disrupting the political process by bypassing party primaries by abusing the recall process.
• Health Exchanges – These implement Obamacare. These should not be created while the constitutionality of Obamacare is still being challenged in the courts. Arizona is a party to a suit, so it would be contradicting its own legal position by creating the Health Exchanges. In addition, once these exchanges are created, they will be difficult to dismantle even if Obamacare is ruled unconstitutional. Governor Brewer is creating Health Care Exchanges over objections of key legislators in order to get Federal grants; these grants could be obtained later if Obamacare is ruled constitutional and the exchanges could be implemented at that point if necessary. Some of Brewer’s staff apparently think that having Health Care Exchanges would be a great thing at the state level even if Obamacare is eliminated.
• State Budget – The state finally has a structurally balanced budget again. In fact, there may be a $350 Million surplus this year. Already, state government officials are trying to get higher appropriations. However, it is essential to build up a reserve because, if Obamacare remains in force, then the state will have an increase of $1 billion in medicaid costs and will need accumulated surpluses to avoid drastic tax increases or huge spending reductions in other parts of a budget of about $7 billion.
• Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) – Governor Brewer sent a letter to all five members of the commission telling them that they appeared to be acting improperly in fulfilling their responsibilities. The two Republican members responded and explained why they felt they were doing what they were supposed to. The Democrats and Independent did not respond. Brewer made a determination that Mathis should be removed from the commission and asked the Senate to concur by two thirds vote. They did, and that removed Mathis from the commission. So far, this has been supported in court. Brewer was originally planning on asking for the Democrats to be removed as well, but about half the Republican senators refused to go along with that. In response to a question about who those senators are, Biggs said he could not comment because the information was based on confidential conversations with other senators. The legislature will almost certainly pass a proposed constitutional amendment to send to voters to repeal Prop 106 which created the IRC. It is better to have legislators redistrict since they are accountable to the people, and the IRC obviously does not take politics out of the process.
• Senate President election – The Republican senate caucus will meet at 10 am tomorrow to select a new Senate President. Senators who have put their names forward are Senators Biggs, Yarbrough, (Steve) Pierce, and Melvin. [Biggs has the best Reagan Republican record according to Pachyderm Coalition Legislative Ratings over the past three years.]

Representative Quayle started off by thanking Senator Biggs, the rest of the Republican senators, and Governor Brewer for removing Mathis from the IRC. Quayle said that the lines drawn for Congressional Districts were almost identical to the worst possible districts that Republicans could imagine the IRC could design. They were gerrymandered so egregiously, that no fair person could consider them acceptable. Although the legislative districts were not so bad, Quayle said that was done to forestall Senate action to remove IRC members. Quayle said that legislative districts would probably have been redrawn really badly after the public comment period was over anyway. Quayle agrees that it would best to amend the state constitution to let the legislature handle redistricting.

Representative Quayle discussed these topics also:

• Obama’s Jobs Package – It was designed to fail so Obama could blame Congress for not doing anything about jobs. However, it even failed in the Democrat controlled Senate.
• Regulation – The Obama Administration has added regulations in the past year requiring an additional $75 billion in annual compliance costs. There are so many regulations being added that, in three days, the stack of new regulations is about one foot high.
• Republican Job Creation Proposals – The House has passed numerous bills, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is holding those bills. Because there are 23 Democrat senators up for election next year, many of them would probably vote for those Republican bills to help themselves get reelected. Reid fears that the bills would pass the Senate with Democrat votes which would force Obama to veto them to prevent them from passing.
• Energy – House Republicans are trying to open up US gas and oil fields for drilling. They also want the pipeline from Canadian shale oil mines to Texas refineries to be built in order to create jobs in America and provide more refined oil products for America. There is enough oil, gas, and coal for North America to be energy independent.
• Obama Voter “bribes” – Student loan programs are an attempt to buy support from students.. He is trying to do the same for home owners with upside down mortgages, but that will actually benefit very few home owners. Obama is fostering class warfare, and many people, including many in Quayle’s district, claim they are part of the “99%” and want the “1%” to pay for things they feel entitled to. It is an ugly approach not following the traditional American approach of being fair and respectful to everyone.
• Super Committee – Democrats want this to fail. They want the deep cuts in Defense that a lack of agreement will bring. Cuts in Medicare will mostly be borne by health care providers being paid less rather than cuts in government.
• Foreign Trade Agreements – These are good for the US and will create about 250,000 net jobs for Americans.
• Federal Law to allow out of state retailers to be forced to pay state sales taxes on sales to people in states where the retailer has no physical presence – Needs to check proposed law, but thinks he is against it because it will raise taxes paid by consumers and, even more importantly, will subject retailers to state laws based on where an order comes from instead of based on their location. This will open the door to allowing states to regulate businesses in other states which will be an intolerable regulatory burden on business.

The next meeting will be on Wednesday, December 14. The speaker is Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal.