A changing of the guard in Washington and right here
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For decades Iowa Press has brought you
politicians and newsmakers from across Iowa and
beyond.
Now celebrating more than 40 years of broadcast
excellence on statewide Iowa Public Television,
this is the Friday, January 20 edition of Iowa
Press.
Here is David Yepsen.
Yepsen: 730 days ago presidential candidates
started campaigning in Iowa ahead of our state's
2016 caucuses and ultimately the presidency.
President Trump's inaugural address Friday
marks the beginning of a new chapter of governance.
Here in Iowa questions remain about the impact of
a potential repeal of Obamacare and what a new
republican majority at the Statehouse wants to do.
Governor Branstad prepares to leave for China and
Iowa's first female Governor prepares to take
office.
Joining us to talk about it all, James Lynch of the
Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Radio Iowa News Director
Kay Henderson, the Des Moines Register's
Political Columnist Kathie Obradovich and Lee
Newspapers' Des Moines Bureau Chief Erin Murphy.
Erin, let's start off with you, but I want to go
around the table to get everyone's reaction to
that inaugural speech that we just heard.
Murphy: Well, to me it felt very similar to a lot
of his campaign speeches.
I was sitting there watching it and I almost
pulled over my laptop and started filing a report
for my paper.
I felt like I was back on the campaign trail.
From that standpoint it was interesting because he
didn't take the opportunity to talk much
about unity and bringing the country together.
He talked about all the same things he did on the
campaign trail, immigration reform, trade
deals, bringing manufacturing jobs back,
he didn't use the phrase drain the swamp but he
talked about sending the power back to the people.
It was very much in his campaign style.
We've been waiting months and months and months for
the so-called pivot and even as President Donald
Trump remains the same Donald Trump we've seen
from the start.
Yepsen: Kathie, what's your take on that speech?
Obradovich: A lot of times an inaugural address is
kind of like a warm hug or a feel good message to
bring the country together.
This was a punch in the kisser, especially for the
Washington establishment, the people sitting behind
him must have started feeling a little warm on a
cold, rainy day because he was making things hot for
them.
Also I was struck by his message to the world.
During Barack Obama's first inaugural address he
reached out, he said to poor countries we will
help you till your farms, we'll help you find clean
water, rich countries like the United States need to
step up.
And Donald Trump was like America first baby, this
is going to be a protectionist agenda and
not something that we're going to be necessarily
reaching out to other countries.
Yepsen: James, your take on this?
Lynch: I think like every President in their
inaugural address they speak to their base and
Donald Trump really did that.
Everything that Kathie said, that was what he
said on the campaign trail, that was what his
base wanted, they want to put America first.
At the same time there were a few lines in there
that struck me as an attempt to be inclusive he
talked about we're going to restore the promise for
all people, their pain is our pain, their dreams are
our dreams, their success is our success.
There was this attempt to talk about how we're all
in this together.
It was a small part of the speech before he went into
the punch in the kisser to the rest of the world.
Henderson: I went back and listened to the previous
inaugural addresses from this century, so two Bush
speeches, two Obama speeches.
I was struck in Obama's first inaugural address,
he said, the question is not whether government is
too big or too small, it's whether it works.
It seems as if voters have said it's too big.
That's the message that Trump seems to have taken
on board.
And the chairman of the Iowa GOP told me it sounds
like a President, when you listen to this speech, is
somebody who is going to fulfill those campaign
promises.
The other thing that struck me was that much of
this speech was about domestic policy, as was
Obama's 2009 speech, whereas that speech that
George Bush gave in 2004 was mostly about America's
role in the world.
Trump didn't talk much about that.
At one point Bush in 2005 said, we are tested but
we're not weary.
I think that there is an energy and enthusiasm
among republicans in Congress because they have
a republican President.
We have the same thing going on in Iowa.
We have an energized Republican Party.
And the gun was sounded when Trump raised his hand
and took the oath of office.
Yepsen: Kathie, just talk about democrats here.
Somebody said, it's morning in America and
there are two ways to spell that term.
So for some democrats they're mourning, for
republicans it's morning for them too.
But, Kathie, so much of this speech really sounded
like a democrat could have given it, that Bernie
Sanders could say.
I wonder if democrats thought, he's speaking to
our audience, there's the 80,000 votes in three
states that could have made this day much
different.
Obradovich: Well, I can imagine Bernie Sanders
standing up and saying the establishment's victories
aren't our victories and their triumphs aren't our
triumphs.
That was definitely a similar theme of
Washington not being part of the rest of the
country.
And I do think that talking about how this day
in history will be the day that the American people
take back their government.
Definitely a populist, very strongly populist
tone from Donald Trump.
I think though as we go forward what we've already
seen with Donald Trump is that his words are really
a lot less important than what his actions are.
And I think we're about to see are we going to get
that flood of executive orders, for example, which
republicans were very upset about Barack Obama's
executive orders as being undemocratic.
Henderson: The other thing, Iowa democrats
should look at this speech and say, what parts of
this speech would I hear Tom Harkin giving?
Rebuild the infrastructure, America
first in terms of our working folks.
Democrats in Iowa should look at this speech and
say, what about this agenda did we miss, did we
not communicate to our people in Iowa if they
want to rebuild their party from the grassroots
up?
Murphy: And why did this resonate with so many
people?
Yepsen: How long will these Trump voters in Iowa
give the administration to produce?
Remember during the campaign we'd hear these
people say, I voted for Obama twice and didn't get
anything and so I voted for Trump.
So how long does Trump have to produce?
Murphy: Well, obviously in general he's got four
years until he's on the ballot again.
But that will be the interesting thing to
watch.
And when you talk to Trump voters since the election
many of them will tell you, I'm holding him to
this, I voted for him because we've lost jobs
and he says he's going to bring them back, so we'd
better see some jobs coming.
Lynch: We'll find out in 2018 how many
congressional seats republicans lose.
That will be an indicator of how patient voters are
going to be.
One other thing I wanted to mention, some words we
didn't hear in his inaugural address, we
didn't hear rigged, we didn't hear crooked, we
didn't hear lion.
Murphy: He could have done campaign speech.
Lynch: Right and he could have been a lot harder on
those people sitting back behind him and around him.
Yepsen: Kay, let's turn it closer to the Midwest and
home.
Last week at the very end we got an appointment of
Agriculture Secretary, Sonny Perdue, former
Governor of Georgia, he's a veterinarian.
Chuck Grassley's reaction was, Senator Grassley's
reaction was, is he a cat veterinarian?
Is this not going over well with Midwestern
lawmakers?
Henderson: Privately there is a little bit of angst
because none of the cabinet picks that Donald
Trump has made come from the Midwest.
Senator Grassley earlier in the week sort of
famously tweeted, it would be nice to have an Ag
Secretary from north of the Mason Dixon Line.
After Perdue was chosen, Grassley said, now that we
have somebody in southern ag at the head of the helm
in the USDA it will be fun to see how the Midwest has
a voice in this.
So you now have people agitating for some of the
deputy secretaries within the USDA to be Iowans,
maybe even someone named Bill Northey who is
currently the state's ag secretary and is sort of
facing a glass ceiling here in Iowa where he
can't run for Governor and he probably is not going
to be Kim Reynolds' Lieutenant Governor so
that might be a next stop on his political train.
It has been fascinating to watch the reaction to
this.
The Iowa Renewable Fuels Association expressed some
consternation about the lack of Midwestern
representation.
Yepsen: James, what do you make of this appointment?
Does the Midwest have something to worry about
that the southerner seems to be making ag policy?
Lynch: Yeah.
I think so.
There's always this concern about southern
crops are different than northern crops.
We grow corn and beans, down there they grow rice
and sugar and cotton.
And the commodity programs don't necessarily mesh and
there's always sort of this if they win we lose
sort of attitude about the Farm Bill, which they're
going to be in the process of writing another Farm
Bill this year.
So yeah, there is some concern there.
I think in Senator Grassley's statement he
said, the appointment of some deputies like Bill
Northey could help offset the southern influence of
Sonny Perdue.
So we'll have to see how that plays out.
Murphy: And it's interesting, you see, you
have leaders both in public office here in Iowa
and in industries like the ethanol industry who are
worried about the RFS now placing their faith almost
solely in Donald Trump because of the things he
promised them even though he has now made
appointments of people who may not have said, may
have said things in the past that don't align, and
I'm thinking specifically is it Pruitt with the EPA
-- Henderson: Oklahoma -- Lynch: Rick Perry.
Henderson: And then Rick Perry.
Murphy: They have in the past not been supportive
of the RFS so you have Monte Shaw at the
Renewable Fuels Association saying I have
to place my faith now in Donald Trump, he assured
us that he will be a strong supporter of the
RFS.
Obradovich: Well and beyond agriculture, the ag
community has to be watching very closely
about what Donald Trump is actually going to do on
trade.
There was a lot of speculation that one of
those early executive orders would be no more
TPP, Transpacific Partnership, big Asian
alliance, that could be really very lucrative,
especially for hog producers in Iowa.
So it's not just renewable energy and it's not just
farm commodities, it's everything when it comes
to -- Henderson: It's NAFTA and CAFTA, he said
he wants to renegotiate trade deals.
Yepsen: Well, and I can see where that resonates
with a lot of the blue collar voters that Trump
picked up this cycle.
But maybe should they be careful what they wish
for?
It is in Iowa's interest to have a trade war with
China?
Where are we going to sell all this pork?
Obradovich: If you're going to be a manufacturer
in Iowa where are you going to get your parts
from if the parts for your new auto plant that you're
going to build in Iowa or Missouri or wherever, if
the parts are all still coming from Asia you're
going to have to be paying a lot of money for those
and it's going to be very difficult.
So I think you've got a cart and a horse here and
modernizing American manufacturing may need to
come a little bit before the horse of a great big
tariff from foreign goods.
Yepsen: Well, to be continued.
Kathie, I want to turn to the Statehouse now.
What is the republican agenda?
They're the dog chasing the car now and they've
caught it, they've got the trifecta.
Particularly in the Senate what are they going to do?
Obradovich: I was struck by how little of their own
agenda that republicans brought into the
Statehouse.
We had a conference with them right before, a week
before the legislature started and really it
seemed to me like they were waiting on Terry
Branstad to bring their agenda so that they would
have something to react to.
Beyond that the House was talking about well we sent
over all of these bills to the Senate that got
stalled the last couple of years, we're going to go
back to those.
And then Senate republican leadership really what
they want to do is do a big tax cut and we don't
have the money for that right now.
So they're kind of stalled in what I think was
probably their number one goal.
I honestly think that this is going to be a situation
where the legislature is mostly reacting to what
Governor Branstad has laid out.
Yepsen: James, is the legislature having trouble
getting off to a fast start?
What we're hearing coming out, we're not hearing
about how they're going to balance the budget, we're
hearing about bills to legalize machine guns.
Who's setting what agenda here?
Lynch: Well, I think it's a case of where if there
aren't big things dominating the session
then you have time to write bills about
legalizing machine guns and banning traffic
enforcement devices and those sorts of things.
And so we're seeing a whole lot of those bills
being introduced in the Senate and finally some in
the House while the leaders and the
appropriations committee chairs are trying to
figure out how to cut the current year budget by
somewhere around $110 to $130 million and everybody
else is sitting there and as one legislator said the
other day, it feels like the end of the session
where you're waiting for a deal to be struck and
somebody to tell us what to do.
Yepsen: Well, where do they get $100 million out
of this budget?
Lynch: Well, the Governor gave them quite a
challenge because he took about three-quarters of
the budget off the table.
Yepsen: I'm sure they were happy about that.
Lynch: Right, and some of the legislators are not
happy about that, that when you have to come up
with a budget cut and three-quarters of the
budget is off the table it makes it harder.
So there are some lawmakers who want to
protect the court's budget and keep the courthouse
back in their county open all the time, they want to
keep troopers on the road.
So they're looking for some alternatives.
It sounds like they're going to honor the
Governor's proposal to pay back the property tax
backfill to cities and counties.
But that was one that they discussed they might not
stick with him on that.
I heard somebody say it would be easier to cut $10
million from the K-12 funding, it would be a
drop in the bucket compared to cutting $8, $9
million from community colleges.
So you have those sorts of arguments going on and
there seem to be some lines being formed in the
republican caucuses in the House and in the Senate,
perhaps the best assessment I've gotten so
far is asking the appropriations chairman,
Representative Pat Grassley, if we should be
seeing white smoke or black smoke and he said
gray smoke.
Yepsen: Erin, the majority leader Bill Dix in the
Senate was quoted as saying, we're going to
kick in the doors.
It's a very populist thing.
So tell me what doors are going to get kicked in
here first?
Murphy: Well, and to what Kathie was talking about,
this group has been in the minority for a long time
and they finally have their chance to run bills
that are going to get passed in their own
chamber much less all the way to the Governor's
desk, which they haven't been able to do in recent
years.
Tax policy, as Kathie said, was right at the top
of the list, wish list, that's going to be really
difficult to do unless it's something that kicks
in, in later years when the budget has a little
more room for something like that.
It'll be interesting to see what kind of proposal
they put together because that's something they
really wanted to do.
But then we've seen the other big ticket thing
right from the start is defunding Planned
Parenthood, clinics that perform abortions.
That is one that they've been wanting to do for
years and they have begun to set the wheels in
motion on that and get that in the budget.
But we'll see any number of things, banning use of
handheld use of phone while driving is one that
is on the front burner in the Senate and I think the
House is actually working on them on that one too.
Yepsen: Kathie, on this budget, is that something
that they could just punt?
The projections are the budget gets better next
year.
Do they have to cut anything?
Do they really feel they have to be cutting?
Obradovich: I think that the republicans have to
make a statement and that statement is that we're
going to have smaller government, they may not
agree on difficult cuts that come halfway through
the fiscal year.
But I would expect that the Governor's budget that
he has rolled out for the next two years is going to
be coming to his desk or her desk depending on who
is sitting there, smaller than what was rolled out
here this month.
I really do think that republicans are going to
want to send a message that we are here to have a
smaller government.
Henderson: Well, and there is a tactical reason that
you do that if you're a budget maker, if you
shrink the state government that means next
year in an election year you have more money in
which to hand back to Iowans in the form of a
tax cut.
Yepsen: So you do the tough stuff this year, you
make people mad, they'll forget about it by next
year and you'll be able to -- you think that's what
you'll expect republicans to be doing this cycle?
Henderson: Internally that's what they tell you
that they're aiming to do is dramatically reduce the
Governor's proposed budget so that they have room to
do at least an across-the-board cut in
income taxes.
Yepsen: Back to kicking in the doors, anybody else
got any other doors they see the republican boot
going into?
Henderson: What's interesting to me is that
this deappropriations bill that deals with the
current year's budget that would reduce spending up
to $130 million, that there hasn't been
discussion about putting defunding Planned
Parenthood in that because that was one of the four
issues that the new republican leader Bill Dix
said was a priority number one for Senate republicans
was to defund Planned Parenthood.
So I would suspect that there may be an effort to
put defunding Planned Parenthood in that bill so
that not only do they cut the budget, which they
promised voters they will do, but they will also
defund Planned Parenthood.
Obradovich: I think the boot will also be going
through the door of organized labor starting
this year.
The Governor came forth with a proposal saying he
wanted to take health care out of collective
bargaining.
That is going to be very controversial.
It would be one of the main points of opposition
I think from democrats that they are going to try
to protect collective bargaining.
I think that the Governor's proposal is
just the start.
I think that there are going to be some
republican legislators who are looking to wholesale,
rewrite the section of code that deals with
collective bargaining and what is paid to public
employees.
Yepsen: James, there's a learning curve among
Senate republicans, isn't there?
Lynch: Yeah, that's the election turning the
Senate upside down, you have about half the
democratic caucus that have never served in the
minority and there's only a couple of Senate
republicans who have been in the Senate majority in
their time in the Senate.
Bill Dix served in the majority in the House but
not in the Senate.
You have Jerry Behn who has been there quite some
time, Brad Zaun who was there when they were tied
back in 2005 and 2006 and shared control.
But beyond that, well David Johnson was there as
a majority republican but he's not a republican
anymore.
So there is this learning curve that they're the
ones who have to put the car in gear, they're the
ones who have to make the process work.
For the past several years they have been the loyal
opposition and I'm not sure everybody has made
the transition yet.
Yepsen: Well, let's talk a little bit about this
balance inside the Republican Party.
It's true nationally, it's true in Iowa, you've
alluded to it, how do they keep the constituencies
that got them there happy without alienating a whole
lot of other voters on issues like abortion, on
labor rights, Second Amendment issues?
Do you think they'll be able to find a sweet spot?
You look at the trouble -- here's what I'm thinking
of yeah Wisconsin took on organized labor and it had
a civil war in the state.
In North Carolina, Pat McCrory is no longer
Governor.
What about Iowa, Kay?
Henderson: We can look to recent history in Iowa to
see where the seeds of dissention within a party
were served because people overreached.
Chet Culver was Governor, democrats were in control
of both the House and the Senate at the Statehouse
and they passed a pro-labor bill that was a
step too far for a democratic Governor and
that sowed the seeds of dissention in 2010 when
that Governor Chet Culver sought re-election.
He didn't win re-election because union voters and
working class voters in the Democratic Party were
not energized because of that very veto.
That sort of thing can happen.
If they don't go as far as their conservative voters
want them to there will be a backlash.
If they do pursue that agenda there is going to
be a backlash.
This is a really hard line to tow here.
Obradovich: And how severe that backlash will depend
in part on whether democrats are getting
themselves together in time to really capitalize
on it.
2018 seems like a long way away but it really isn't
when you've got no candidates.
We just had one of the great hopes to run for
Governor in 2018, Senator Liz Mathis, say not me,
not me.
And I think we're going to have to see very soon who
the leaders are of the Democratic Party stepping
up to get their party ready to capitalize on
what is going to be inevitably some mistakes
and overreaches on the part of the republicans.
Yepsen: Erin, what about this going too far?
In Kansas when the Governor there cut taxes,
they cut taxes so bad the state is running a big
deficit, it backfired on the republicans there.
So are Kansas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, even
Indiana lost athletic conferences because of gay
rights legislation.
Where do you think this is going to come out?
Murphy: There are examples out there and to be fair
some of the current Iowa leaders have said we have
watched other states and we're trying to use those
examples.
This is going to be interesting because it
really comes down on leadership.
The rank and file are going to file every bill
they want to do, every bill they've been dreaming
of doing forever, so it falls on Linda Upmeyer and
Bill Dix and then Terry Branstad or Kim Reynolds
depending on who is in the Governor's Office.
They are the ones that will ultimately decide
which of these pieces of legislation really get a
hearing and get to the desk and what gets out
there for the public.
So this is the challenge they face.
And I talked to leaders back when republicans also
controlled the Iowa Statehouse in '97, '98 and
they all said that these leaders are really going
to be tested, it's up to them.
Yepsen: James, we've only got a minute left and I
want to ask you about the Governor's embassy
appointment.
When is that going to happen?
Is he going to -- when does Kim Reynolds --
Lynch: Good question.
Kim Reynolds told us the other day she expects it
in February or March.
There's nothing definite about that.
We assume the transition will take place sometime
during the legislative session.
But Governor Branstad might be here for the
entire session.
That might be good politically for Kim
Reynolds not to have to take responsibility for
anything that goes wrong during the session but be
there to take credit for anything that goes right.
Henderson: It will also be good for Kim Reynolds to
have Terry Branstad on another continent because
he won't be able to weigh in on anything, he will be
occupied with another occupation at the time.
Obradovich: Well, she's going to have to make the
office her own in some way and whatever way she
chooses, if it's different from what Terry Branstad
would have done it's going to be probably
controversial.
But it would help her if she had a whole session to
get used to the idea.
Yepsen: We've got to leave it there.
Lots to talk about, lots more to talk about later.
Thank you all very much for being here.
We'll return next week with another edition of
Iowa Press.
Our guest will be Board of Regents President Bruce
Rastetter.
Mr. Rastetter has faced numerous challenges during
his tenure and his current term expires at the end of
April.
Regents President Bruce Rastetter on the next
edition of Iowa Press.
For all of us at Iowa Public Television, I'm
David Yepsen, thanks for joining us today.
♪♪
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donors to the causes and communities they care
about for good, for Iowa, for ever.
Details at iowacommunityfoundations.org.
The Associated General Contractors of Iowa, the
public's partner in building Iowa's highway,
bridge and municipal utility infrastructure.
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