GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, July 11, 2017

[0:00:01 Speaker 0] in the news

[0:00:08 Speaker 1] morning. I’m Professor Shaw

[0:00:09 Speaker 2] and Professor McDaniel. Welcome to in the news for American in Texas politics.

[0:00:13 Speaker 1] Now, you guys have hope at this point read the syllabus and done all of your pre class assignments and things like that. So this should come as no surprise to you. But every week, Professor McDaniel and I are gonna be doing it in the news segment where we talk about the events of the day and try to connect. You know what’s going on in the papers or online stuff? You know where you’re getting your information from? With concepts, Of course. Sometimes, you know, we’ll get a little you know, this stuff that we’re not gonna cover till 234 weeks ahead and will try to give you some context. But more often than not, we’re going to try to talk about the things that are relevant in the modules and connect them up to things that are going on in the news. So we don’t spend a lot of time in this segment talking about class logistics or things like that. But we do want to emphasize that. Generally speaking, these are gonna be released on Wednesday, Professor Mundane, and I’ll come in and do it in the news segment every Wednesday, but for scheduling reasons the 1st 2 weeks, this week and next week. We’re going to do these things on Tuesday, so they’ll drop on Tuesday and you guys will have an opportunity to view them and then respond because, as you know, part of the classes assignments involved in the new segments. Okay, so just so that’s clear. All right, so we’re gonna start up today talking about I guess we’re gonna go from kind of, you know, international, really broad stuff to step that’s more narrow and localized, which something will try to do on a week to week basis. But this week won’t talk a little bit about President Trump’s participation in this major economic summit. It was held. It was in Hamburg, I think, was a Hamburg in Germany last weekend. The G 21st Daniel, your public policy guy with heck is the G 20.

[0:01:49 Speaker 2] So the G 20 is really about the major economic players in terms of the global economy. So if you go to the G twenties website, though, point out, you know what I think they make 80% of the of the global economy comes from these countries. And so US, Russia, China, India, Canada, Mexico, Australia. These are some of the G 20 countries in Africa. The only representative you have. It’s South Africa. But you might be surprised at some of the nation’s that aren’t there. So for its allies in the region or Scandinavian countries, they’re not included. Also, you find a number of the Eastern European countries are not included because again their economy is not booming enough. But you will see that these are really the major economic players when it comes to the global marketplace. And seeing President Trump there is. It’s a regular meeting that they have each year. But it’s seeing President Trump. There is really an exit. Is an example of him showing himself on the international stage and seeing how he could be an international player.

[0:02:46 Speaker 1] Freshman Daniel actually pulled the map up of the G 20 countries cause, you know, I remember like it used to be a G seven. That’s how old I am. God, that’s kind of embarrassing, but, uh, and it was kind of the United States and Britain and some of these really kind of robust capitalists, democracies and these countries air almost all capitalists. Now there are the Russians, and the Chinese have sort of this weird form hybrid form of capitalism, I guess mixed in with state control, that kind of thing. But but the map is really kind of interesting is Professor McDaniels said. I mean, you look across the African content and you’ve got South Africa’s A player they remember they have, like two. Wasn’t Senegal and Guinea, I think. Are there not quite members or sort of guests? Yes, of the June 20? Yeah,

[0:03:27 Speaker 2] I’m in many ways. I think it’s a way to show that they’re open to other countries and allow them to be part of the discussion.

[0:03:36 Speaker 1] Yeah, I think Vietnam is technically a guess. Just look at the map. We were kind of surprised. Spain is not actually a member of the G 20 Nora’s Portugal. Those Spain is a guest, and Portugal, I guess, didn’t get invited to the dinner. But they got something shoot for, I suppose. So. What do they do with these summits and why are we talking about is in the news? Well, it’s It’s a place where, if you think about its professional data, said 80% of the world’s wealth world’s economies are concentrated in the G 20 countries, right, so they’re major players. So they go to these summit meetings and they try to strike deals. They try to strike both multilateral agreements. Larger trade agreements released, pushes forward or bilateral trade agreements. How has it come become relevant for President Trump in the United States? Will President Trump campaigned on pulling out of these multilateral agreements or renegotiating them at the very least, and emphasizing these one off bilateral agreements? So, for instance, you all probably where the British Great Britain is leaving the European Union. It’s part of the Brexit vote that they took a couple a year and 1/2 ago. I guess so. The Brits are leaving, so the United States is very interested in negotiating a bilateral agreement with the British. But if you do that, are the terms and aggressiveness with which you pursue that does that anger some of the other members of the EU? So, for instance, is United States was talking with the British, the Japanese and the Chinese were coming in and talking to the U and the Germans, who were kind of the major player in the European Union EU we’re talking about. Maybe we should strike a deal, you know, multilateral deal with the Chinese. All right, so there are consequences to these different policy initiatives. And, you know, as it’s an interesting question about whether multilateral agreements that would be something like NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which involves the United States, Canada and Mexico. That’s that’s what I mean by multilateral versus bilateral agreements, which are a little simpler and, you know, a little more direct but don’t have the economic kind of heft that these bigger agreements are. So the United States has emphasized in recent years multilateral agreements, big time trade agreements to try to open up markets. Trump has said. We’re doing a lousy job negotiating those. We should have these bilateral agreements that are more favorable to the U. S. This is where the rubber hits the road. Can you really do that? I guess Professor McCain, I’ve talked recently about how countries that haven’t been players on the order of the United States have become players recently, but trying to step into the vacuum. If the US isn’t gonna go along these big trade agreements, maybe the Chinese will. Maybe the Indians will, Right? So it’s interesting to watch that it’s also interesting from the perspective of the presidency. You know, Donald Trump came in talking about domestic issues. For the most part of the immigration is not quite domestic domestic implications. Trade was the one foreign policy thing, he emphasized. More than anything else, presidents liked operate where they have more latitude and more control and certainly negotiate trade agreements is an area where Trump doesn’t have to worry about. The bureaucracy. Doesn’t have to worry about the Congress quite as much as he does on these domestic issues, for instance, to health care, which is something we should probably turn to. So But before we do that, we mentioned the G 20. The other thing in international news that’s gone on recently is concentrating the Middle East, where there’s been some. I guess you could say good news in the last week or so, but, you know, we want to talk about one of those things. That may be good news. Maybe not. So the good news is that it looks like the Iraqi army has pushed Isis, the Islamic state out of one of the major cities in Iraq. Mosul. We’ve been waiting a long time for this to happen. It looks like the Iraqi army is sort of starting to recapture ground that they lost to the Islamic state a while back. That seems to be a good thing. That seems to be a partial, at least a vindication of the Bush and Obama strategies of how to deal with Isis and the Islamic state. There was also a ceasefire agreement brokered by the Russians and the Americans and the Jordanians. A ceasefire in Syria. Now this is the part where press from dinner or not, seems like good news. Any time there’s a ceasefire, it’s probably good, but longer term. There are reasons to question whether this is actually going to help anybody and the reasons I guess we get looked this up. There have been three ceasefires in Syria negotiated since the civil War between the Assad government and sort of patchwork quilt of rebels in Syria, some of which the United States thinks would be much better than Assad. Some of them maybe not so much better than Assad. The Russians have been backing the Syrian government under Assad. The Russians like the status quote. The Russians want Assad to reassert control because Syrians air client state for the Russians. So the Russians have negotiated the cease fires. And the question then is in the question about whether it’s good or not falls under the heading of Well, is this just good for the Russians in for Assad, for him to solidify his hold in Syria? Or is it something that will make progress towards brokering a longer term piece or a transition from Assad to a more democratic government? We don’t know

[0:08:36 Speaker 2] way don’t know this. This was a really difficult wanted negotiators. You have kind of three players involved and what’s going on in Syria. So you have the Assad government, which has been charged with a variety of human rights violations, and then you have the rubbles fighting back against the Assad government. But then you have the third player of the Islamic state, and so the U. S. Is trying to control the Islamic, the growth of the Islamic state, maybe try to push them out of Syria. But the idea is, do you support the Assad government and doing this? Someone who you know is committed human rights violations. You do go with the rebels. But if you go with the rebels, then you’re actually helping with the continue the civil war. And so that’s been really been one of one of the major issues is to what degree is the aside government, you know, bombing the Islamic statement, also bombing the rebels at the same time. And you know, you got basic three fights going on and everybody agrees upon okay, we need get rid of the Islamic state. But once the alarm Islamic state is removed from Syria, who should be in charge, and that’s where the big the big problem comes in. I think President Obama took a very hardline stance against the Assad government. President Trump Oblique was soften that to a certain extent. Now he’s actually made the argument not getting involved in Syria whatsoever when he was a candidate. But as president, he’s quickly become involved. A lot of people try to say, Well, look, you know you’re going back on what you said Here’s the thing when you’re a candidate, there are a lot of things you’ll say, And when you’re president that you will, you would never do because of the same thing. With with Obama President Obama when he was a candidate, many of his foreign policy statements as a candidate were very different than its foreign policy actions as president. Same thing with president for President Bush again, when your candidate, you have a freedom to say a lot of things. But once you’re president, you realize you were constrained in a lot of ways, and what you think is simple is much more complicated. And so, for all those who are kind of going after President Trump in regards to this need to remember, he’s not the 1st 1 of the last one to do something like this.

[0:10:37 Speaker 1] The Middle East is a puzzle that you know, the solution to, which has escaped everybody in mind that are much greater than ours. It is a three dimensional chess game, Mr Fish, McDaniel said. I mean, just think of the players, the Assad regime. You have this odd compilation of rebel factions or rebel groups. There’s no there’s no rebel headquarters that you go to. This isn’t you know it isn’t Star Wars. All those some elements of that, but on. And then you’ve got the Islamic state, which is also sort of multifaceted, and you’re trying to play this things off and you’re doing the best you can. Their questions about how much the United States could do, even if we could identify the factions in the countries that we support or think would be most productive for American interests. So it’s it’s tough from a class like this, which is focusing on American government. You know, the thing we want to emphasize is, for the most part, we’re talking about a world now that is, we have international communities everywhere. Even if your perspective is, we should only be in places where American interests are directly at stake. That’s probably a lot of places, thes days. Andi. Even if you assume in Syria well, there really aren’t direct US interests at stake. We should get out. Extracting yourself is difficult in nature. Politics like nature of boards, a vacuum and one of the things that’s interesting is the United States has tried first under Obama and then really under President Trump as well has tried to extract itself from some of the more aggressive commitments that the Bush administration maintained. You know, you get out and the Russians flow in or the Chinese flow in, or these other countries that do see possibilities economically and politically at plate, they will come in, and that’s not an argument to do these things. It’s an argument that it’s more complicated than you might think. OK, so So we got the G 27 which is largely foreign policy economics. We’ve got the Syrian and larger Middle East situation. There’s a geopolitical. They obviously have some economic consequences there, mostly military power issues, those air, what’s going on in foreign policy. And we have even touched because we’re that much time talking about. The North Koreans saw a couple articles today talking about how the main American strategy has been to sort of put pressure on the Chinese and to have the Chinese try to influence what’s going on in North Korea. The articles basically suggested one Chinese don’t have nearly as much power as you think with respect to the North Koreans, and secondly, the Chinese air kind of looking at everybody else going Was this our problem? now I actually think it largely is a problem of their making. But you know, the Chinese aren’t really willing to exercise what power they have. The North Korea situation is another one to keep your eye on and Professor Daniel probably talking about it over the course of the summer, whenever news seems to really slow down, you can always turn to North Korea and you’re gonna get something out of there. So let’s let’s read it in a move to domestic front, Let’s talk about health care, as we’ve been doing between Trump and Russia and health care. We’ve been talking about this for the past four or five weeks, but let’s move to the health care situation. Chris McDaniel Got any thoughts on where we are right now with respect to health care reform?

[0:13:32 Speaker 2] So right now, the Senate tried to have a vote on the plan to repeal Obama

[0:13:38 Speaker 4] care the A C A. But they

[0:13:40 Speaker 2] had a postponed that they couldn’t get enough votes. Right now, I believe they’re on recess, and so you’re seeing number of town halls, things like that. Town halls aren’t going well, so a number of the constituents just aren’t supporting it. I mean, the interest thing about it is that just as much as you had considerate against the drafting up of Obamacare, you have them against repealing it, because again, there’s a lot of uncertainty and one things that’s important. I mean, President Obama on many of the Democrats believe this Look, let’s get out there. Once it was, are benefiting from it being invested in it. Once they’re invested in, it would be very difficult to pull away. And so it’s gonna be really interesting to see if they’re able to do this. And again, this is banned really a central plank of the GOP. It’s okay. Look, we’ve got control of both houses of Congress. We’re going to repeal this act. We don’t like it. And President Trump has said that this was going to do. And if they’re not able to do this, this really puts a damper on their ability seen us being to get things done and again, you have to have a number of issues with it. You have the moderates who like no, this goes too far. You have the conservative, like go far enough and again in the top that we have the public, there’s a great deal of uncertainty about what’s going on. The Democrats thought OK, if we get it in, you know, let’s get it going and then we’ll be able to fix it as make the proper changes. But the problem was 2010. People were upset about the A C A and so they lost a number of seats and they were not able to recoup those seats in 2012 or in 2014. And so because of that they were not. They weren’t able to make the adjustment that they wanted to make to the law, to make it to fine, tune it, to make, to get it to work better. And so we’re in this situation now where everything, even the Democrats degree like look there a lot of problems with law that need to be fixed. But the problem is you switch the mechanics and so the mechanic who’s now in charge is the one who wants to get rid of it all together, and we had to ride this out and figure out what’s going on. In addition to this, you have a number of governors who are opposed to the bill, both Republican as well as Democrats because of the extensive cuts to Medicaid. And so Medicaid is someone’s put forward to protect of the poor. Provide them with health care. It’s, ah, relation between the states and the federal government by cutting Medicaid funding. That means that put a greater burden on those states to care for the poor. And many of the governors are opposed to this. And so you’re getting a great deal of pushback in a bunch of different directions regarding this. And so it’s gonna be interested to see how it plays out when Congress reconvenes and if it what changes have made, Um, and if it’s somehow able to pass or dies,

[0:16:23 Speaker 1] the nice thing about talking about this is it’s obviously relevant, but it touches on so many of the things that we’re gonna be talking about over the next couple of weeks. This is one of those deals where it’s hard to understand the game or the players without a scorecard. So let’s do a couple of definitional exercises here, make sure we’re on the same page. So professional getting I talking about reforming Obama care, which is the kind of colloquial name for the Affordable Care Act of 2000.

[0:16:48 Speaker 2] The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Yes, so it’s actually two laws,

[0:16:53 Speaker 1] right? So it’s it’s popularly known as Obamacare. It’s sometimes the abbreviations

[0:16:57 Speaker 3] the A C A.

[0:16:59 Speaker 1] Okay, the Republicans campaigned against this. They thought this was a horrible law. It, you know, just to kind of refresh your memories. Essentially, what Obamacare does is it has expanded health insurance, so not health care, except in so far as health insurance facilitates healthcare, you know, people who aren’t insured in the United States get care. You can show up in an emergency room, but this is health insurance and the Affordable Care Act expanded the availability. Health insurance. How to do that? You might ask Well, what it largely did. Was it subsidised and put into law increases in Medicaid eligibility? So a lot of people were poor. Not so much elderly people who report weren’t not eligible, even though they had very few. Resource is for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act expanded that. So when you hear the figure, 22 million people were insured under obamacare, the lion’s share of those people were newly eligible for Medicaid. All right. That’s how they kind of achieved that now. I also tried to contain costs at the same time. So this wasn’t just a expansion of an entitlement program. Initially, it was tried designed to try to contain costs. And so what they did was they made people who are not currently purchasing health insurance. Healthy people, for the most part, young, healthy people, many of whom were probably like yourselves, like in college. You know, why would you buy health insurance, you know, to cover the one cold a year that you guys get right. So, you know, do I want to pay $1200 a month for health insurance? Probably not if I’m in college, right? Well, what the Affordable Care Act did this is no, no, you guys have to have insurance. So it expanded coverage in two ways. Sort of young, healthy people have the individual mandate. You’ll have to have insurance. Those people come in, they pay money into the system. They don’t take much money out. That creates additional money for the pharmaceuticals. And, you know, the insurance companies. And that money helps cover the costs of expanding Medicaid So I say cost containment. I’m talking about kind of in the aggregate. And there was a sense that this whole project would also kind of stabilize markets so that increasing premiums for people like Professor Daniel and I, who have Blue Cross Blue Shield through UT that our costs premiums would stabilize. Also, that was the logic. But a lot of states said, you know, the federal government said We’ll give you money to cover this expansion of Medicaid. A lot of states, Texas included, said, We don’t believe the federal government’s going to do this for very long. We think you guys are gonna pay for it for a while and then you’re going to stick the bill with us states. So this gets this federalism issue that we’re gonna be talking about a lot this semester. So the states, several of them many of them said, We’re not going to, you know, participate in the exchanges that are proposed under Obamacare. So it’s been

[0:19:43 Speaker 0] kind of

[0:19:43 Speaker 1] a mess in that regard, and the rollout was problematic. The website, which was supposed to get people and rolling in the system, was all messed up back in 2014 So all of these things have been kind of issues Republicans have been claiming for years. We’re gonna replace, repeal and replace Obama care. Okay, You win the scent. You know, first the house and the Senate, then you win the presidency. Now the Republicans control all three branches of Government House, Senate, the presidency. What you gonna do? Well, right now they’re trying to fulfill their campaign place. The House has passed a plan, So that’s sitting there. The Senate is working on a plan. If the Senate passes a plan, then there will be a reconciliation committee, House and Senate to hammer out the differences between the two plans and then will be sent to President Trump to sign that plan is called. Is that the American Health Care Active

[0:20:34 Speaker 3] H c A. You got the A. C A, which

[0:20:38 Speaker 1] is professor of Data, points out. That’s actually one of two Obama care bills. Then you got

[0:20:42 Speaker 3] the A H c. A. The

[0:20:45 Speaker 1] American Health Care Act. That’s the Republican plan, all right, but the Republicans is professor of data. Points out they’re finding out that once you expand health insurance coverage to people previously didn’t have access to it.

[0:20:58 Speaker 0] They’re not real happy

[0:20:59 Speaker 1] about you Taken away from them. A lot of the younger people who were sort of subsidizing this, a lot of it, haven’t actually purchased insurance. They’ve simply paid the tax. You know, there’s a fee or a fine. If you don’t purchase this. That’s a lot of people argue that’s actually more economical than purchasing health insurance. A lot of younger people simply haven’t done it all and haven’t yet received the tax for the fine, so the systems will unbalanced. But there are people now with the stake in it they don’t like, you know, the idea of it being removed. They also don’t like some of the particular provisions of obamacare that the Republicans are talking about repealing. I should say they like the provisions. They don’t like the idea of taking them away. So, for instance, preexisting injuries that you know insurance companies used to deny health insurance to people. If it turns out you had a pre existing injury or even a genetic predisposition to a particular disease, Obama care blew that out, said. You can’t do that. That is now, you know, illegal, I guess not inappropriate, but actually illegal people like that. They like the idea of, you know, one of the other things about the Affordable Care Act was it expected, basically expanded and defined how long Children can be kept on their health insurance plans of their adult of their parents. So my kids could be on my health insurance plan till they’re 26 freeloaders. But good for them. People like that. You know, I like that. So these are things that it’s not just that you’re trying to take health insurance away from people who had. You’re also going to undo legislation that has several aspects to it, that people who aren’t necessarily, you know, newly on the rolls. They like these other parts of obamacare also. So how do you do that? How do you take apart that stuff that people don’t like and keep the stuff that people like Now, right now, the one thing that the Republicans might have in their side politically is that if you undo the architecture of Obamacare, the Congressional Budget Office, which was established in the 19 seventies kind of in a series of reforms under Nixon, has scored the Senate bill, and they have said that. Okay, if you undo the affordable care act, you will cut the federal deficit. Significant? In other words, it was a lot of money poured into the affordable care act. But what do you do with that? S O and people think we should reduce the deficit. But would they rather have healthcare, or would they rather have the reduction in the deficit and the deficit? Health insurance? I should say. So maybe the Republicans can plow some of the money saved and put it into shore up some of the more popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act. This is the puzzle that Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, is dealing with right now. Can he do this in? The Republicans have a problem. Not only is it a complicated bill they’re trying or law they’re trying to tinker with, but they’ve got people on the far right who just want to blow out Obama care completely. And then they’ve got people on sort of the center right who want to just tinker with it, who don’t want to blow it out. People like Olympia Snowe in Maine on the other side, you mentioned the far right you have people like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are more libertarian. They think you should just completely repeal Obamacare. Don’t worry about the replacement. Some sense. Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, said. It has to figure out a bill that will satisfy these people. He’s got basically about a week before there’s a summer recess. If they don’t get anything done, they don’t come back from summer recess until September 5th. Yeah, so right now, can the Senate come to an agreement and put forth a bill that the Senate convey Haute on and pass that will then be the basis for reconciliation? Or will the Republicans with the House, the Senate and the presidency be incapable of fulfilling their main campaign pledge? That is, to repeal and replace Obamacare. That’s the deliver for Mitch McConnell, and that’s really in a lot of ways. And we talk about the Russia probe in this little it’s significant. But this healthcare thing, I think, is probably the most politically consequential aspect of the summer debate. You think I mean, is there anything else really on the rise

[0:24:59 Speaker 2] and everything? I think right now it’s it’s health care. I mean the Russia probe is something that just will never go away because nobody has any idea what’s going on. It’s Zaveri slow leaking tire in that sense. But the health care debate, I think, is going to go on for a very long period of time. And one of things important understand is when we’re talking about health care, there multiple players involved. So there’s a financing aspect of it. There’s an access. There’s a quality of care and obamacare. Try to, uh, deal with all three of these so access, quality of care and cost. But if you actually look at how it’s played out, there is a show financing their multiple moving pieces. And what you try to do with the with Obamacare was increased access, but also increased quality by the way, you went about financing it, but also a and so but all these moving pieces I would just seeing now with the A Republican bill, is they Is that some of these parts that, well, people kind of like that, But they’re trying to really move all of these pieces, and it’s it is extremely complicated, and one of the reasons why people have argued, but complained about why we needed reform of American health care system because it is so unbelievably complicated where, as opposed to the British or the Canadian system, where it’s very clear, the U. S system is basic, a lot of COGSA and on wheels going on, and just one adjustment of one could just tear the whole thing apart.

[0:26:31 Speaker 1] It’s weird, you know, you would have people from the from the far right and the far that I mean foreign. Further but strong Republicans, strong Democrats who would have agreed, I think in 2009 that the Wake health insurance works the United States is sort of messed up. I mean, think about it. If we were all to design a country from scratch and we came to this question of healthcare and said, Wow, how should hasn’t we approach health care? And I think some people might say, Well, the government should provide health care to all of its people through attacks. Some of us might say, Well, you know, individuals should be responsible for their own health care, so there should be a true market, you know, like like for courage is right. You can purchase a minimal plan or a deluxe plan, and you know it’s priced accordingly. I don’t think many of us would have said No, here’s what you should do. You should have employers provide health care so that individuals don’t ever really see the costs except through some very variable deductible ray. And the deductible will change from year to year. And you know, the cost will be recouped by these insurance companies negotiating. I mean, it’s it’s It’s the result of an incremental process that doesn’t make a lot of sense, and we all think that’s true. But there’s no real agreement on the smartest way to reform the system, and I think that’s that’s kind of the

[0:27:47 Speaker 2] one of the arguments has been one of the reasons why the American help the retirement system seem to be a little bit clearer in American health care system is because the private industry mild it after so security. When it came to health insurance, the private industry was there, and then the government filled in. And that’s why. And some people argue that because the government is the leader in Esso security with retirement savings that it becomes a little bit clear. Whereas with the health care, the government stepped in later and after the private industry. And, you know, you see a great deal of complications.

[0:28:22 Speaker 1] Yeah. Okay. One final topic. This is sort of Ah, you know, I went off. I went off the grid a little bit for this one because it said is removing from sort of international to domestic with health care. I wanted to talk about him or local issue. The Texas Legislature has is in special session right now in a special session of special sauce. Yep, exactly which is, you know, they meet every other year. They meet for 100 40 days, they have a session, and the business is done and they go home. But under Texas law that the Texas Constitution, the governor can call special sessions special sessions. Last how long, Professor MacKinnon. 40 days, 30 days. And

[0:29:02 Speaker 2] what should calm multiple?

[0:29:03 Speaker 1] How many can you call? As many as he or she chooses to. So s so you can have the special sessions all the time. Governor Abbott has called a special session for was a 17 or 18 different topics that he

[0:29:14 Speaker 2] Yeah, I think they like their two or three that were at the top of the list. I think if those recovered, he may not call another special session. But, um, he wanted, I think it was like it was

[0:29:26 Speaker 1] a lot. Yeah, And so if you know if you’re in town in Austin right now and you notice the Legislature still seems to be a buzz beehive of activity, that’s why there’s a special session going on, one of the topics that they’re covered there, covering a bunch of different things, as we suggested. But when things are covering, is annexation rules in Texas Now, for those of you who are, you know, outside the United States or you’re in other states where they have very narrow annexation rules may not seem to be like much of an issue. But for local communities in Texas, this is a big deal. So take Austin. What we’re talking about here with respect to annexation is there’s the city of Austin.

[0:30:02 Speaker 0] There’s a bunch of

[0:30:03 Speaker 1] areas outside the city of Austin, and some of them have the ability to incorporate if they want into their own cities. So, for instance, Rolling Wood is its own city Westlake kills is its own city. Is

[0:30:15 Speaker 0] Pflueger Village home city

[0:30:17 Speaker 1] blips think Pflueger villas in some cities. So So you know, when Austin was really, really tight, these places were like, Way out in the boondocks. Well, now is Austin has expanded. These places are adjacent to city territories and the city of Austin. Typically, whenever it has a chance, annexes thes territories. Now, why does it annex these territories because of the property tax values. So place like, uh, if they could their places out in the West like Rob Roy, for instance, which is sort of suburban west of Austin. It’s a very affluent neighborhood. My guess is the home values. They’re probably 800,000 to 2 million a pop. Yeah, So why wouldn’t the City of Austin want to an ex those territories bring them into their tax structure and to gain the benefit of property taxes associated with those properties? So if you’re asking yourself, why does Austin or Dallas or Houston or San Antonio Why did they want to annex? I don’t really want to annex places with low property values because they will have to provide services to those areas and they won’t be recouping nearly as much in taxes, Theoretically. Okay, but why would they want to annex more affluent territories? Because it’s a cost effective maneuver for

[0:31:31 Speaker 8] them. All right,

[0:31:32 Speaker 1] so what am I talking about? This has come up in the Legislature. Will Donna Campbell, who’s a state rep for actually I mentioned Rob Roy, but Rob Roy Westlake lost create these sorts of places on the west side of town. She’s proposed legislation that would put annexation to a public vote. This complicates right now. The state Legislature in 1997 passed a law that said, Basically the cities that are gonna annex territories, they do have a restriction. The restriction is they can’t just willy nilly annex them and then not do anything for them. They have to buy state law, provide comparable or superior services to the areas that they’re gonna annex. So if you’re in some area Wester Easter south of town and Austin says, we want to annex you, the

[0:32:17 Speaker 0] only

[0:32:18 Speaker 1] real restriction is they have to have the authority to do that. Some places in order to get around being annexed, some places willing corporate. When I say incorporate, they will actually declare themselves a city, and then they will be responsible for all the obligations of responsibilities the city has to its citizens. But you can’t One city can’t annex another city. All right, what they can annex or what we call extra territorial jurisdictions. E. TJ’s in most of these areas surrounding often Onion Creek, Lost Creek robbery these places, these air extra territorial jurisdictions when the developers build houses there. Initially, they entered into agreement with the city where the city said, Okay, you can build there, but at some point, you know we will have the right to annex those territories and most developers go. That’s fine by us on day. Deny them the right to incorporate that’s part of the development contract. So when you hear about an E. T. J. Or your parents were talking about that in Texas, replace cells, extra territorial jurisdictions. That means you are about to be annexed, especially if you’ve got people with money in that area. Okay, so, you know,

[0:33:23 Speaker 0] back in the nineties,

[0:33:24 Speaker 1] they thought we should put some restrictions and the restriction the state Legislature passed, was it? Hey, you can’t annex him and them not provide police and power and trash services. You have to provide not only services but services there, at least comparable to the services they were enjoying. All right, So if they’ve got some sweetheart deal, the city has to go in and at least do something you know to, you know, make sure they water the park lands and stuff

[0:33:47 Speaker 8] like that, all right?

[0:33:49 Speaker 1] Donna Campbell’s Things says will

[0:33:50 Speaker 0] not only

[0:33:51 Speaker 1] have to provide comparable or superior services, you all need to get the support of the local community as well as the city that’s doing the annexing that would make this more complicated. So right now there’s a fight in the state Legislature over this for the city’s air, opposed because this is a very significant source of revenue to the city’s. Austin is growing like gangbusters, for instance, and the City of Austin really would like to incorporate some of these places, annex them and bring them into the tax base. And, you know, they would, of course, provide police and these other services as well. But they would introduce a new revenue flow. They don’t really want to put these things up to a public vote because funny thing about these suburbanites, you know, they tend to get these anti city attitudes and you know they don’t necessarily want to be annexed. It seems like almost every area that’s gonna be annexed fights it, whether they’re affluent or less affluent. You know this is going on, and it’s part of an antagonism between the state government and the city governments. You’ll probably heard about the Sanctuary Cities argument where the state government is threatening to deny resource is and services to cities that declare themselves sanctuary cities. So that went on during the regular session that continues. Now, Now you got another effort where the state is basically saying, Hey, you cities, you guys were just picking off these little e TJ’s and trying to get their money. Now you have to actually put that up to a vote and the city’s air pretty angry right now at the state Legislature because they see themselves under assault and this kind of comes back to a broader point that will raise in one of lectures. Very recent lectures be released in the first set of modules on federalism. So we talked about federalism. The United States, not just national to state. It’s also state to municipal and local. And right now in Texas you’re seeing a really kind of interesting example of right now the Texas State government not have a riel positive relationship with local governments.

[0:35:44 Speaker 2] Know, expect the big cities and you’re seeing this as a bit of ah, of conflict throughout. You know, you see the urban versus rural divide just in terms of elections. But now you’re singing, also being played out of states, where you’re seeing many people trying to push back on the powers of cities. And, uh, again, what cities are allowed to do is very important. One of the arguments why Detroit has had so much economic trouble is because the state would not allow them to annex. He’s the territories where you basically had people who would work in this work in the city but then live outside the city limits. And they would do all their shopping on stores. They’re located, like basically on the border right outside. And so the income tax, the property tax revenue, all of that. The trip was unable. Teoh unable to bring in to revitalize the city, which leads its crumbling and so cities are are aware of this. And again, it’s the idea of a growing power like how far can you grow? How far can you have influence on? You know, the states are stepping into this, and it’s a very important understand is the power of the cities or localities to do this is not dictated by the U. S. Constitution, but by the state Constitution. And so it may trickle up to the Supreme Court as some other type of fight. But for the most part, many of these things will be handled within the state Supreme Court. So the U. S Supreme Court may only here this fight if there’s something truly peculiar about it, but for the most part will be handled within within the state state judicial system.

[0:37:16 Speaker 1] Yeah, just the 1st 1 guy raises a really interesting point, which is the city of Austin would say, for instance, to people who were gonna be annexed. Hey, you guys come into Zilker Park. You guys come into downtown and six Street. You enjoy all of these services that the city provides. You enjoyed the green spaces you enjoy. You know, the sort of cultural environment that you have in the city, but you don’t pay any taxes, you know, and that’s not fair. What the suburbanites say is like, Well, wait a sec. When we go into the city, we absolutely pay taxes. We pay taxes whenever we order a steak, it some steakhouse or order ice cream or go to the movies. We pay a sales tax, which goes to the city, and the city is entitled to raise the sales tax or to put surcharges or whatever they want. You know, you go toe many cities today, you’ll notice the hotel tax, right? Okay, But what Professor McDaniels say Detroit is a really great example here where not only did you not have the property taxes in these suburban areas and Michigan really restricted, you know, and still does, actually, the ability of cities to annex people were fined. Basically, this sort of we call them doughnut cities, right where you’ve got a central city. And then everything is built up around it in the caller area. But it doesn’t redound or it doesn’t descend down to the city. And it goes to these little suburban communities and they become affluent, and they get the sales taxes, but not the city. Now. It’s not quite what it is in Austin, but that is a pattern that’s occurred in some of these Northeastern and certain Midwestern cities that you become ghost towns recently. Not to Detroit’s actually had a bit of a comeback lately, but it’s an interesting question for American politics, right? I mean, how do you keep the city’s vibrant? How is it that central cities, you know, managed to maintain a viable economic base when there’s all this flight into the suburbs? So that’s what we got for today? I think. Yeah. All right. So we are done. You got one in the news segment in the bank And what, five

[0:39:13 Speaker 0] morning. And we to five

[0:39:14 Speaker 1] or six of these things. Total form or to go for to go. So I think we have five in the news is total. We’ll correct that if we need Teoh eso the first set of modules Air released. Good luck with those will be holding regular office hours. Professor McDaniels, the professor of record this semester, so I think he has to actually do three office hours a week.

[0:39:31 Speaker 2] Yeah, yeah. Might be virtual this week. and next week. But I will say the time

[0:39:35 Speaker 4] for when I’ll be able do those.

[0:39:38 Speaker 1] All right now I have I have office hours. I’m gonna hold them on the day when we do the in the news segments so normally there on Wednesdays from 10 30 to noon. But for this week and next, I’ll actually be available on Tuesdays, same day I’m in to do the filming. So today and next Tuesday, 10 30 to noon come and see me in my office were both over and bats Hall. Professor Mok Dan’s doing virtually. But welcome aboard. We’ll see you guys soon.

[0:40:08 Speaker 0] Government 3 10 and The news podcast is hosted by doctors Darren Shaw and Eric McDonough and is produced by the liberal Arts TS Development Studio and the Department of Government and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin