Hello, my name is David Olds and I'm your cohost for Mississippi Happenings.
Joining me each week is my friend and cohost, Jim Newman.
Jim, how are you, my friend?
If I were any better, I'd be twins.
All right.
As you know, we talk about kitchen table issues that all of us face in Mississippi.
And we offer information from experts in the field and with solutions for plans of action.
Our guest today is Mississippi House representative from District 94, Natchez, is Mr.
Robert Johnson.
Mr.
Johnson has been the minority leader of the state house since 2020.
He also serves as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
He received his law degree from the University of Illinois
of Law.
He also worked for Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore and Attorney General Edwin Pittman before starting his own law practice.
in 1989.
Representative Johnson, is an honor to have you with us today.
It's an honor to be here.
Thank you all for reaching out to me.
Yes, sir.
The 2025 legislative session is officially over and it's been, from what we can, what we read and what we heard about, it's been very interesting.
So Jim, I will turn it over to you.
Well, let's just start right off the bat with what is happening immediately.
Representative, you attended a hearing yesterday with the Fifth Circuit, I guess, and over the redistricting.
Can you tell us what happened and what's the outcome?
sure.
So the hearing yesterday was called because the NAACP, ACLU and the plaintiffs that brought this redistricting case had objected to the plans that were approved by the House
and the Senate.
And essentially, the reason for the lawsuit was that it was acknowledged and it's discovered and after litigation, was
ratified by the court that there are areas in the House and in the Senate where Black voters are not having their vote, one man, one vote, maximized to the extent that they
have a fair chance of electing a representative that would represent them.
And the one House district that the court approved for change was House District 22.
And that plan, even though the court had approved a plan that both parties had agreed to, the court always allows the legislature to draw a plan that's consistent with what the
court ruled.
Well, the House said that they did that, but the plaintiffs said they didn't maximize it.
The House plan, the court's plan would require a restructuring of about eight districts, including the one where the change would be made.
And the House
the
would essentially be like a coin toss district.
It didn't offer a real practical or a realistic chance for African-Americans to maximize their vote.
In the Senate, it was more extensive than that.
And so the court heard the arguments from the plaintiffs that essentially said, would you please force the House and the Senate to draw plans that are consistent with your ruling?
And the defendants, the people representing the state and the Republican Party said they have done all that is necessary, that the Voting Rights Act, Section 2, only requires you
to have a reasonable opportunity.
Their argument was that it doesn't have to be a guarantee.
And the court, through his questioning, essentially said, we're not looking for guarantee, but we want a realistic change.
And the argument was they didn't think the House, not the court hadn't ruled yet, but the plaintiffs, the House and the Senate didn't do that.
So it really comes down to a fair chance versus a guaranteed outcome.
Right, right.
the court, through his question, essentially said, there's got to be a position between an opportunity, a fair opportunity, and a guarantee, which is what the court is looking for.
They essentially said, I think that the section two essentially wants you to do more than just give an opportunity.
They want you to give a realistic opportunity.
And the court seemed to say,
I'm not so sure that the House and the Senate did that.
And so they're going to go back and we expect to have a ruling in the next week or two because the Secretary of State and the Circuit Clerks have said they have to have the
actual plans in their offices by April 25th in order to redraw, you know, how they will run the election, where to set up box, where the precincts would be, the organization to
get the election ready by, I think the...
the deadline for the election will be June.
So the court is trying to get something done prior to April 25th.
because if they don't get it done, I'm not sure that I think April 25th is correct.
But the ballots for overseas military, they're eligible to vote, have got to go out.
And if they don't, then it gets pushed back and nobody wants to have a Christmas.
That's exactly right.
You got it, Gina.
That's right.
which goes back many years.
Mr.
Nunley from Tupelo.
I gave a lot of consideration to running in that race against him.
And I've always felt I could have beat him.
Yeah.
but I was just not prepared to spend the last two weeks or the week before and the week of Christmas campaigning.
I just did not think that was the right thing for me to be doing and I just refused to do it.
So.
I agree with you as a person who's run a number of them, that is not a time that I'd like to be running.
No, it's time to be with your friends and along with that.
Tell me how you feel.
did the Mississippi legislature finish up the year?
I know that we got.
some bedding done.
I know that we can ship wines in now.
So we made a couple of people happy.
But a lot of people got disappointed, I think.
What is your perspective on how successful or unsuccessful this last legislative session was?
Well, I was fairly disappointed.
And you're right, we did get direct shipping of wine to a certain extent, which is, you it's not monumental for a state that.
was for probably five of us that.
Yeah, right, right, right.
I mean, you know, a bottle of Bogle or a bottle of freak show.
mean, they, you know, I like good wine, but they're about the same.
I don't need to order any, you know, somewhere.
But, you know, I just I'm fairly disappointed.
I take my job seriously.
And I think there are a number of people in the legislature who do.
And we have a responsibility to do our job.
And I don't think we did our job.
I don't, it just, it pains me to think that we left and didn't finish a budget and we're to hand that over to the governor to decide when and how and what we'll consider when we
come back.
And I just think that's a bad way to legislate.
And I also am disappointed that, that even though you have Republicans and Democrats in, you know, in this state, that I am disappointed and we get accused of this, but I think
it's far more.
orchestrated in Republican circles that that day, you know, you're more concerned with reading from a playbook that somebody wrote in some think tank out of Washington instead
of focusing instead of focusing on the needs of the people of the state of Mississippi.
Now, you know, people talk about us having a surplus, a surplus that was pretty much accumulated as a result of covid and democratic policies like American Recovery Act.
that President Biden passed.
The state got a ton of money through those two programs.
And we've essentially funneled that money politically to places that are on the right side of the politics of leadership in this state.
But then we come back, even though we know that's one-time money, and say, we got a surplus.
It's time for us to do a tax cut.
And how do you do a tax cut in a state that, even though we've made some improvements in education, we are still so far behind in our public education system?
and funding actual infrastructure.
I'm talking about schools where you actually have access to wireless, where kids can actually work on a computer or actually have computers on their desk or have classrooms
that are sufficiently heated and cooled or where they're not ceiling tiles falling out.
When we talk about improvements in education, there's still a whole lot of work to do.
And even though we gave teachers a pay raise and teachers pay raises are important,
because you want to attract the best people to those jobs, we still are far behind in terms of the Southeast average in terms of what we pay our teachers.
And so when you talk about tax cuts, you would think that the tax cut will be coming in a state that's flush with money, that we see money coming in in the future that's going to
keep us enthralled with enough money to do all the things and meet all the needs that we need to meet.
We are at the, I mean, you all talked about this beforehand, but it's well known, except when you talk to the governor, the governor, I don't know where he gets all these flowery,
we're doing so great.
They, you know, he makes it up, I guess, but every, at every industry that you look at, we last in healthcare, we last in economic growth, we'll last in education.
I mean, when I say last, we're in the bottom five, we'll last in infrastructure.
But the most important thing is education and healthcare.
Nobody wants to live in a state when you can't, when you don't have access to an emergency room.
Nobody wants to live in a state that has the lowest per capita patient doctor ratio in the country.
People want to be somewhere where they can take care of their health and when they have the opportunity to build something for their families.
And we're not doing that job.
Tax cuts instead of focusing on the things that people send us down here for.
Public education, public health, public safety and public infrastructure.
just do your job and we can take care of that.
But instead you got people who want to read from a playbook that may work in Texas, that may work in Florida, but it's been done in other places.
It hadn't worked in West Virginia.
It's been a disaster.
It hadn't worked in Arkansas, these tax cuts.
It hadn't worked in Arizona.
And God knows that Kansas is the best example.
Even Republicans have to admit it was a complete disaster.
And so why do we keep following a playbook that doesn't work?
And so.
I'm just disappointed that we did that.
And so now we're stuck with the governor calling us back and he's just having his heyday with this.
He's asserted that, well, I'll look at what budgets we need to take up first.
How about we just take up the whole budget and take care of the business of the people who stayed in Mississippi?
And then he wants things that failed.
I think I'll put school choice back in there and I'll look at the Parents Bill of Rights and maybe the Tim Tebow Act.
All those things failed.
They were fully vetted, argued and debated and they failed.
But the governor wants to bring us back in a special session so he can push that down our throats.
I just hope that Republican leadership have the courage to come in and say, thank you for sending us back to take care of our budget.
We've reached an agreement.
There's other stuff you can leave it out.
We're going home.
So I hope we have a good sense to do that.
Representative, sound like a Democrat.
I get accused of that from time to time.
Yeah.
I'm quite sure.
But, and I love everything that you just said, but let me ask you a question because the Democrats in the state of Mississippi in the legislature remind me of the Democrats in the
U S Congress.
They're there, but they don't speak out.
They don't raise hell when things aren't going right.
I mean, the whole country has been wondering where are the Democrats?
And I'm wondering the same thing.
Where are the Democrats in Mississippi that are not bringing all of this out screaming every day that we're on the bottom?
We don't have to be.
We can not.
We can do things that can help get us off of the bottom.
We don't have to live there.
I mean, look, I hate that you're in Tupelo and hadn't heard me screaming, but I'm gonna scream a little louder where you can hear me.
But I'm one Democrat that I can tell you I've been screaming.
And as evidence, I've been screaming.
Democrats that you're talking about who've been silent are upset with me because I've been screaming.
And they say, look, we got to figure out how to work with these people.
I say, well, you don't work with people from a position of weakness.
You got to work from a position of strength.
And you have to be vocal and you have to be striving in your position.
about what you do and you'll find that people will respect you if you do that.
But I'm with you, I'm frustrated with the Democrats in Washington.
been, mean, and Democrats here in Mississippi who think that the way to make things happen is to comply and capitulate to Republican leadership even when they're wrong.
And so, I mean, we had 11 Democrats in the House that voted for a tax bill and I would mention this in every one of those Democrats represent areas where they've been
grossly underfunded and grossly underrepresented in budgeting that we do in this state.
And so, and in the Senate, we could have killed that tax bill, but four Democrats voted with the leadership when they had four or five senators who were Republicans who voted
against it.
If they'd have just voted with all the Democrats, we could have killed that bill there.
But, you know, we've got to start getting back to having a backbone.
as Democrats and realizing that this is not a short-term game, this is a long game, and you gotta be prepared to work and stay true to what you believe in.
But you're right, we don't do enough to call people out, we don't challenge the governor when he makes these false assertions about how we're doing, we're losing young people who
are moving out of the state.
know, the governor said something the other day.
He said, the reason that is, right, He said, said, I mean, think about how nonsensical this is.
He said that we need to, it's okay for us to create this fifth tier in the retirement system when we pay people less money.
They have a weaker retirement plan and they pay less money into the retirement system.
And so their benefits are less.
We can't recruit people.
He said, you know, young people,
don't like staying anywhere 20 to 25 years like we used to.
They want to move around.
Well, I don't know what young people he talks to because all the young people I've talked to want the same thing we've always wanted.
They want a home.
They want to raise a family.
They want to be able to do that without a tremendous amount of struggle.
And the idea that he thinks that somehow it makes it attractive to start out weak and then lose that population because they don't want to stay here.
They want to stay here.
They only leave because the opportunity is not available to
Well, I just want to say one more thing and I'll let David have his shot at you.
Anytime you want to shout out and raise some hell.
Our podcast, according to statistics we had, what was it?
11,000, what do you call them, David?
Impressions, 11,000 impressions.
And every week we.
want to come on and have your say about something that's going on and get the public stirred up, just give us a call because we'll make the time available to you because it's
time.
you're gonna be hearing from me, absolutely.
I hope so.
David, it's your turn.
Let's kind of break down a little.
But I get passionate too.
And we've had some good conversations with Ty Pinkins, with Greta Kemp Martin, with Jarvis, Dorch, ACLU.
And it's good because Democrats and you know...
Progressives, we need to get excited about this.
But let's talk, let's kind of break down a little bit about the income tax elimination, state income tax.
But also I do want to point out and I've done my research on you.
One of the things Mr.
Johnson that you're known for is your bipartisanship.
and your ability to work with and to reach out with those across the aisle.
So I applaud you for that.
we know that, and if I've got my facts wrong, tell me, 47 % of our budget comes from the federal government is what I understood it.
And with the changes with the federal government and...
Why are we?
Or why is the governor so dead set on losing, with the state income tax, losing basically a third of our budget?
What's in it for the state and what's in it for Mississippians with the elimination of the state income tax?
I don't think there's any advantage at all.
mean, the governor, when we passed, when the house passed HB1 and sent it to him, and he praised the passage of the bill and said, now, now we can help President Trump take this
money and secure the border, which made no sense to me.
I don't understand how one thing has anything to do with the other one.
But those are the kind of things that he says.
The only benefit I can see in this tax cut is it benefits Tate Reese politically.
not in Mississippi, but somewhere else.
look, 47 % of our budget comes from the federal government.
In January, as my friend Omer and Scott, Donald John Trump started making these cuts and cutting money headed to the states, the argument was specious as best about cutting income
tax.
We're the poorest state, the lowest per capita income in the country.
It makes no sense.
But it made even less sense when you start eliminating, the federal government started eliminating the Department of Education, start saying that in a state that every year
faces hurricane disasters, possibly, that he says, we're gonna eliminate FEMA.
You're gonna have to stand on your own two feet.
What else he did?
Oh, we're gonna cut transportation money.
We're gonna cut Medicaid in $880 billion, which means,
that Mississippi, which is a 90 % state, 90 to 85 % in terms of federal funding, will probably go to 50%.
We barely getting back, keeping hospitals open now.
I don't understand for the life of me that at that point somebody should have said, okay, let's pump our brakes and see how this, this, this, all this, you know, ferrets out.
Let's see what the, what the president is actually about to do.
But nobody did that.
At least the Lieutenant Governor had a good sense to say, Hey, uh,
maybe let's look at this and hold on for a minute.
And then towards the end of the session, he actually said, when people ask the house, which is famous for its Christmas tree, you notice how they get votes.
They pass out these half a million dollar little tokens to communities that actually need about 20 million.
And everybody goes home and say, well, I brought a little money home.
So they asked the Lieutenant Governor, what about the projects bill?
That's what they call it.
And the Lieutenant Governor actually said, which I have been saying and other Democrats have been saying, how can we talk about spending
hundreds of millions of dollars when we're about to cut 2.7 billion dollars out of our seven billion dollar budget.
We can't afford to spend money on your little projects at home because we don't know if we're have enough money to run the state.
And so I have no idea.
I have no idea why the governor doesn't see the lack of wisdom in doing this.
And then we exacerbate the problem by making a mistake in the bill that said that if the
Next year's appropriations is 85%.
We have an 85 % surplus.
That's when the trigger will pop in.
We changed that accidentally to a .8500 of a percent, which means that we could be cutting taxes and cutting our budget tomorrow if the law went into effect.
But they sent it to the governor, he signed it anyway.
So none of it makes any sense to me.
But it makes sense if you're okay with maintaining the status quo.
The vast separation of wealth in this state, the poor will stay still poor and even poor and the rich would at the very worst will maintain their status as it is, but they'll
probably grow.
This tax cut is regressive.
People who in the top 1 % will realize like a $42,000 a year on average savings and income tax.
People in the middle income, is our average is about medium income is about $42,000 a year.
They will realize that
$795 a year savings, which is about $2 a day.
And the poorest people will realize about $42, people in the lowest income brackets.
But we do that on top of, we say we're gonna lower grocery taxes, but nobody talks about this, but we also gonna raise taxes on other consumer goods and raise the gas tax in a
state that has no mass transit, that people are barely able to buy gas and go back and forth to work in a less than living wage job as it is.
None of it makes any sense.
just creates a, it just continues to knock the legs out from any opportunity to grow and do better than we can do in this state.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
That's the short answer, by the way.
well, let me follow up with the other side.
Why would anybody want to come to Mississippi?
Why would a business want to come to Mississippi?
And you can use eight or 10 words.
I don't know why they come except whenever we want to attract the business, we just give away the farm.
know, the continental tire, know, the continental tire is probably mad as hell right now because we said that one of the things we gave them as an incentive is that they could
keep the income tax that would be collected from people who work for them.
So now they won't be able to get that.
But we just give away everything.
mean, we build a battery.
We did economic development project in Marshall, Canada, build a battery plant and the state's been
close to $300 million just doing site development to get it ready, spent $20,000 an acre, $20,000 an acre on barren land to buy 700 acres.
mean, you essentially come in and have everything you need to build a business handed to you.
But we don't do anything, anything for three or four generation homegrown businesses, homegrown industry in this state, not a thing.
Think about if you invested in what you already have here.
who've been able to survive bad economic times for generations.
If you gave them some incentive, could build, I told somebody, if you gave Adams County $385 million, we could build a new city in Adams County, let alone create jobs and
economic development.
But why would they come here?
I don't know, because one of the things that people always talk about, how do you incentivize businesses to come here?
Let me tell you what every industry I've ever talked to, and we proved it because that's how we spend our money.
They want a working infrastructure, highways, roads, bridges.
They want water sewer that works.
They want good health care because their employees want to be able to come somewhere where they can be taken care of.
And employees, because they're going to have to ship, just about every industry that employs more than 300 or 400 people have to ship half of those people in here.
They want to have good schools.
So why wouldn't you invest your money and time in to make sure
Those things are fortified.
You already have cheap labor.
People would come here if you had those because we don't pay people that much money.
And even if you created a good job, say an $80,000 a year job, that job would probably be a $120,000 a year job somewhere else.
They would love to come here, but you can live like a king on $80,000 a year in Mississippi, and we could attract people here.
But instead, we continue to keep people poor.
Do you know we haven't done any economic development
West of I-55, I don't consider a continental tower one of them because all the resources are concentrated just in Clinton.
But in 30 years, we hadn't done that.
We invested site development money from the governor's office, I think it's Union, Perry and one other county in East Mississippi.
They have invested more money in site development for economic development in those three counties than they've done in the entire Delta.
That is just, that's abhorrent.
criminal.
You know, you are as strong as your weakest link and you continue to make people who fervently want help and fervently want to stay in their hometowns and they want to work
there and you purposely won't create opportunity and jobs there.
And I say they because I don't control the purse strings.
The Republican leadership in this state, which has been the leadership in this state for a couple of decades, they control that and they purposely don't take care of the people that
need to be taken care of.
Well, it's time for change.
Yes.
Let me ask you quickly about PERS, the Public Employees Retirement System.
Did anything happen with that in the past session?
Or did it get pretty much tabled?
We pretty much got a table, which I don't think was a great idea.
But one of the things that came, in the original tax bill was we were going to take the lottery money, take it away because we raising the gas tax, we were to take the money we
were giving the roads for maintenance, which was about $180,000 to $100,000 a year, and divert that money to the retirement system from lottery proceeds to solve
what has been acknowledged as a $25 billion deficit problem.
so, but that wasn't included in the bill that we gave the governor to sign.
And then, but there was something there by creating a fifth tier, which essentially says people will, we will, people can pay into the retirement system, pay a little bit less and
part of that money would go into a private IRA or retirement plan and some private, you
entity managers and but the benefits that they would be promised, the benefits that they'd be entitled to would be less than the people who are currently in the retirement system.
So that did happen.
But let me say this, it's an illusion.
It doesn't do anything to help the problem.
And we have leadership in this state that brags about in the last five years that they have been able to
eliminate over 2200 state employee jobs.
And so if you have fewer people paying into the system, then you then the people taken out of the system, the system cannot sustain itself that way.
And let me say this, this idea of shrinking government by laying off or firing state employees is it is a fiction because you know what happens, don't you?
We don't stop providing those services.
Those people don't stop working.
We privatize those jobs.
We, somebody's buddy creates an industry.
I'll give you a perfect example, like child support.
We ran all that through the department of human services for years.
And now it's private.
is contracted out to an organization called Maximus.
Same employees.
Those employees didn't lose their jobs.
They just ended up working for their private entity, but they don't have the healthcare that the state provides and they're not in the retirement system anymore.
So.
This idea that, we got rid of those employees, we're saving the state money.
They're not.
That money is being spent, but it's going in somebody's pocket and your retirement system is losing the benefit of having those 2200 employees that will be keeping the retirement
system going.
It just, if people would just, I tell people all the time, if you would just read, it doesn't take a long read.
It's a short read to understand that these people are lying to you and we need to, we need change.
We need to get leadership back.
I mean, private prisons.
they, but the private prisons industry, I mean, we've spent tons of money with them.
When we had a correction system, wasn't the best, but look at the kind of problems we've had with the private prisons industry.
We didn't fix a problem.
We just traded the management of that problem to somebody else.
And those people are not employees anymore, but they're working for somebody who they're doing the same job for somebody else.
you know, no, I mean, it's just, if people would just sit down and use common sense,
You know, as a lawyer, one of the arguments I make all the time is that the law recognizes what common sense tells you.
Well, legislation is good because it recognizes what common sense tells you.
Common sense tells you how to take care of your business.
It's not a complicated process we have down here, but there's a lot of selfishness and a lot of self-promotion that gets in the way of people doing their job.
Just the concept of a prison for profit is just unimaginable to me.
I don't get it.
I don't understand that.
look, when I started practicing law, you could go to a judge, in your community, the judges knew everybody, you knew everybody.
The judges said, you, Ms.
Mabelson, well, I'm gonna tell you what, I'm gonna, you you committed this crime and I'm gonna give you chance in next two or three months, if you don't get yourself straight, you
know, I'm locking you up.
And that was a great incentive for people to straighten themselves out.
But not, but, you know, the second or third year I was in the legislature, we passed the 85 % rule.
And I'm like,
Why are we taking the discretion from judges to be able to manage their docket and be able to tell people we won't keep from filling up our prisons?
And then what, a year later we passed the act for private prisons.
So we have an 85 % rule saying we're being tough on crime.
No, we're not.
We're just guaranteeing that we can fill these prisons up for profit.
And so it is just, the spirit of it is wrong.
The idea of it is wrong.
And there's no good that can come out of it.
tearing our state up, that whole concept, that whole selfish privatization and people having flesh for profit.
That's what it is.
You're taking human flesh and making profit off of it.
It's just a bad thing and it's hurting us all around.
And we take them from other states, which is even worse.
states.
We take them from other states.
The prison down in Natchez on Highway 84 is just filled up with alleged illegal immigrants.
That's, mean, essentially, we just, you know, we look for an excuse to pay somebody to house, you know, people who have been arrested, you know, from other places.
They're not from Mississippi.
They're from all over the place.
Let's talk about healthcare for a little bit.
Every year Medicaid expansion seems to come up.
And the numbers that I look at is that Mississippi is leaving money on the table every year by not accepting those federal funds to expand.
Medicaid.
What's your thoughts about health care and also about expanding Medicaid in Mississippi?
At the outside chance that they're Republicans who listen to your show, and I hope they are, I will explain that because they think that somehow Medicaid is some giveaway and we
just giving money away.
And I tell them all the time, don't know Medicaid recipients don't get money.
You know, they get health care.
It's like it's like with your automobile.
You if you maintain the oil and you make sure the tires are straight, it'll it'll make sure your car will last longer.
It'll serve you better.
If you have a healthy workforce, you're gonna keep more people working.
You're gonna be more productive.
It's gonna be good for your economy.
And also the people who can't work, the disabled, the children and those people.
If you have medical coverage for them where they can manage their health, it costs you less than if you find them in the emergency room or in a hospital that needing
catastrophic care.
People say, well,
But that's their responsibility.
They have to pay for it.
No.
What you need to understand is there's still a public hospital act.
It was the, I can't think of the name of it.
was something Frank's Act.
We passed the public hospital bill back in 1968.
It actually started under Franklin Roosevelt because the idea was that the areas in this country, most of it was focused on Appalachia where there are poor people who don't have
hospitals.
So they built, the federal government,
paid to have hospitals built in areas that couldn't afford to have hospitals built.
And they say, we'll build these hospitals for you.
This has been the law for decades.
We'll build these hospitals for you and we'll help you keep them open.
But the one thing you have to do, you can't turn anybody down.
You have to serve those people.
You can't turn them away from the emergency room.
can't, you gotta see them.
They may have a bill, but what we'll do as a federal government is we will provide, we will pay for that uncompensated care.
When you do what we ask you to do as a public hospital, we will make sure you get paid for the people you serve.
Well, they passed the Affordable Care Act and it said essentially that model is okay, but we want to have a more efficient model.
And that model will say, those people who instead of providing for uncompensated care, what we'd like to do is make sure that everybody has coverage.
Because if you have coverage, that means you're not showing up at the emergency room for a cold or flu.
you're going to your doctor's office and they're making sure you get the right medication.
because hospital care costs a whole lot more than going to the doctor's office.
And so they had it there and they said, you know, just a brief history, the federal government said, but you have to pass the Affordable Care Act.
Then Republicans sued, Republican states sued and said, they can't make us take that.
And the Supreme Court said, no, they can't make you take it.
But if you can decide not to take it, but you don't get the money either.
And so Mississippi was one of those states idiotically that decided we didn't want the money.
Phil Brown was governor.
We don't want that money because he was following whoever the governor of Texas was at the same time.
This state that was rich in oil and gas reserves that they didn't need Medicaid money, but Mississippi needed it.
So we turned it down and so far it's been about 16 years and we've turned down over $16 billion that could fortify our hospitals.
could help us hire and keep more doctors and medical professionals in this state and make sure that happens.
And that's what we've done.
We have foregone the opportunity to take that money and keep our healthcare system strong.
And that money just doesn't go get blown out in the wind.
It probably goes to California, it goes to somebody else.
So, we talk about California and how much we don't wanna be like them, but they're taking our money.
Wow.
What's good, what you mentioned education earlier, when the governor finally gets around to deciding what he wants to talk about in the budget, it seems to me education is going
to have to be one of the topics because we're going to the largest budget.
And we just learned today, I guess Monday, that
The federal government's cut $137 million that we're not gonna be getting.
Yeah.
How's the legislature or the governor going to make up for the loss of that?
We haven't fully funded the educational program except twice in its history.
And it's not fully funded now, although we've got a new.
mathematical formula for funding it.
Yeah.
What are we going to do?
I mean, got schools that actually have roofs that leak, that put buckets on the floor to catch the water.
That's right.
I don't know what we're going to do.
And it goes back to what I said originally.
How do we justify cutting a third, close to a third of our budget out when we have these problems that exist right now?
But 50 % of our education budget comes from the federal government.
So when this federal government starts talking about cutting $137 million, we have to fill that gap some way or we will do, we will
have services or programs that we don't offer our students.
And I guess the governor is okay with that, clearly, because they don't want to do anything about it.
But, you know, my answer, what do we do about it?
The legislature comes back and gets some guts and says, these are problems that we have to address.
And despite the fact that we wanted to give you a tax cut, we can't afford it right now because of what's happened for no other reason than what's happening in Washington.
And we have to be able to take care of that.
first and then we can look at doing some tax cuts.
But I don't foresee that happening.
any money left in the surplus budget, surplus fund?
to $2.8 billion.
But you know, that what if we keep taking it, we don't.
Yeah, it'll go fast.
You can't you can't sustain yourself.
This one time money is like wiping out your savings.
You may be able to do it, take care of things for a year or maybe two, but that'll be it.
Because think about it, if you have if you don't, you're not collecting income tax, there's there's a whole revenue stream that you don't have anymore.
And
I asked the chairman of Ways and Means, so we'll take care of that with growth.
Where's the growth gonna come from?
You're not gonna, mean, grow where?
They think people are gonna buy extra ribeye steaks or something?
None of it makes any sense.
I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but people need to know that's exactly the answers to those questions that I got on the floor.
And there are no real answers that anybody's providing.
This has been so much fun.
I love it.
Go ahead.
I'm just saying this playbook, we've seen it happen in Kansas.
Kansas went bankrupt.
Republicans had to come back and repeal the law.
They had to come back and undo what they did.
But it took them 10 years to relent and say, OK, it's a disaster.
It's been a disaster.
We got to fix it.
So, know, I just, you know, it makes no sense.
Representative Johnson, we love your passion and we do share your passion for this.
And we've kind of hit on points of this, but I do want to bring something up.
The U.S.
News Award Report ranks Mississippi 48th.
And this is the list of their best states ranking.
you know, from 1 to 50, and we are 48.
We are number 50 in health care.
We are number 50 in the economy.
We are number 48 in infrastructure.
We are number 45 in fiscal.
physical stability, 35 in education and 35 in opportunity.
I think we've touched on a few of those things, but these are some of the, this is how they rank us as, know, the bottom, you know, the bottom of the bottom.
What's your thoughts about this as why Mississippi is ranked at the
as one of the poor states, if not the poor states in some areas.
think the part of the problem and because we need new leadership in the state and the reason people don't see the urgency of the leadership is because I think most of our
attention is focused in the capital city metro area.
know, people look at roads, the city of Jackson has terrible streets, but the highways and roads around Rankin and Madison counties in those areas, know, DeSoto County and some
places on the coast where our population is concentrated, people don't see
the urgent need that we see in other areas.
And so they don't, you know, they, they, it's sort of, they live sort of in a Pollyanna kind of, you know, it's like, I don't even know what happens in Greenville or Greenwood
or, or Fayette or Woodville, because I don't go to those places.
But when you, you know, what that, ranking is based on the fact that there are areas in this state that are sorely in need of infrastructure, healthcare.
I mean, I don't think there's a, there are places in the Delta that there's not a pediatrician or OBGYN.
And I'm talking about 400 or 120 miles.
And so those things factor into those statistics, which is why I say our problems are not that complicated.
They're right there in our face.
You could solve those problems in the Delta with healthcare and bring those numbers up.
If you would just expand Medicaid, a billion dollars a year in the state of Mississippi could change the whole.
whole outlook on healthcare and the economy, if you would take that money.
And on infrastructure, we concentrate that area, there are areas in the state, the Northern area highways and Southern area, they have spent in the Delta and central
Mississippi where most of the minority population lives.
In the last 10 to 15 years, the last 20 years, we spent
two-third, one-third less in that area, in those areas than we have in other areas of the state.
In the last five years, and I'm gonna do research back, we spent 70 % of the money that the state spends on infrastructure and economic development has been spent in majority
white counties, only 25 % of the money that the state has spent.
We spent a ton of money has been spent in counties that are majority African-American.
And so when you see those numbers,
There are people in the states that would live in certain areas.
that can't be true.
But those of us who live in those areas that have been neglected understand that those numbers are terribly skewed because the gap is so wide.
And let me tell you, it would take half the money that you would spend to do something in DeSoto County or Madison or Rankin County.
You could spend half that in Jefferson or Clayton County and get a whole lot more result out of it because the...
The ask is so low.
mean, you know, could, you can live with less income in those areas if you just provide a decent job, a decent opportunity.
And we could do that.
We had, we in the last five or six years, we've had enough money to concentrate on those areas and we could do that.
Now the governor's office is suddenly saying we're beginning to refocus our attention on the Delta in those areas.
Well, that's 20 to 25 years overdue.
I mean, I'm glad you are now, but you
you the way we work in politics, you start talking about the focus, but it probably is going to be another eight or nine years before you actually do something about it.
So I just, it bothers me.
Let me tell you the part that bothers me, not so much that we're at the bottom, but that I think the problem is not that hard to solve and we got the resources to do it and we just
refuse to do it.
We could solve those problems.
Gotcha.
And, you know, I live in DeSoto County, which is close to Tunica County.
And from what I've seen and what I've heard, you know, Tunica County was promised all this money when the casinos came through and that was going to be the salvation.
And that was going to do all these wonderful things.
And then slowly all of these casinos kind of fade away.
And when I drive down that way occasionally for, you know, it's really sad.
David, you could go to a casino.
I go on other businesses, the casinos.
I love my money better.
I'm not going to, I'm cheap.
I don't, but anyway, if people go to casinos, I love it.
That's fine.
But that ain't me.
I like my money, you know, but, but why has, and let me throw this out.
It appears that since
With the Delta being ignored all of these years and continue to be ignored, is that a type of Jim Crow-ism?
Yes, yes, I mean, to put it mildly, it definitely is.
I mean, even when you consider casinos in those areas, I mean, we could have diverted more of the casinos that income that came from those particular areas to those areas.
You know, one of the things that I wasn't here when we passed the Docs, I mean, Docs, I gambling or whatever we called it.
But when I got here, one of the things that everybody complained about, they told us that we pay if we pass this gambling legislation, that money would go to education.
Well, the money didn't go to education.
At the very least, it should go to local areas in a more appropriate manner so it can help shore up those areas.
But it didn't go to education.
It wasn't pinpointed in the general fund.
And we spent it everywhere except on education.
I think that's the problem with places like Tunica.
Let me tell you something about gambling, casinos.
We talk about the income we derive from casinos, but the truth of the matter is,
it can be a drain on your local economy because what happens is, know, local restaurants close because everybody goes to casino to eat, people who gamble, you think most of them
would be coming from out of town, but they're local people.
So people are, you know, losing their houses and their family savings because they have a gambling addiction.
So gambling is a specious way to build your future.
you know, it is not the most reliable way to
fortifying economy.
But at the very least, if you're to have it, the wherever the casinos are, let more of that money go to those areas.
When I was chairman of transportation, we had a casino Roseville.
We had to fight like hell to say, look, that money, people are going back and forth on those roads going to casinos.
Some of these are small towns like Natchez and Tunica.
Let's take a portion of that money and commit it to at least fortifying the highways and stuff so we can actually have an infrastructure that we can
attract some industry some other way.
But people just don't, I mean, we don't, it's like we get to the capital and lose our minds.
It's like, you know, people stop thinking.
And so, yeah, that part of it is a problem.
We're at the bottom because we see a problem and we have the resources and we don't commit to doing something about the problem.
It's just not that complicated.
Understood, Jim, what you got as we wrap it up?
I was just thinking about my own representative who lives two doors down from me.
And I don't mind calling him out, Shane Agary.
You may know him, Mr.
Johnson.
I know.
I guess he's been down there almost 12 years, I think maybe three terms.
He had done a damn thing.
Period.
what to do.
But he told the party line.
I look at him sometimes.
He doesn't say anything.
But I know he knows what's right.
I know he does.
And not to point out any, but there are times when he voted against his own interests in order to follow the party line.
And that's regrettable because he's a good person.
I'm just telling you, sometimes it just shocks me.
We got women who have voted.
voted against the bill for equal pay for women because the Republicans didn't want to pass it.
mean, I mean, you know.
like that's one thing that we have in Mississippi, our own voters vote against their own interest.
When we think of expanding Medicaid, Medicaid is not just for an African American.
It's for poor white people.
But yes.
Yeah, that's what it's for.
It's for poor working people or elderly, disabled and children.
That's it.
If you're not poor and working, if you're not disabled and old and you're a child, you can't get Medicaid.
Yep.
Representative Johnson, it's been great having you and do you have any last words for us or comments or anything?
well, you said something earlier that I would like to point out.
I'm not a antagonist.
That's not my job.
But I do think it's important to point out things that I think that people need to know and make sense.
And you said I do have a reputation, in fact, to my sometimes to my detriment of working across the aisle.
I don't work across the aisle just by saying I want to agree with you because you're in leadership.
I try to bring people to the table to talk about everybody's interests and everything gets covered.
And I think we need to do more of that.
And I would encourage everybody out there to elect people who represent their interests and hold them to that.
And I would also like to say to people, register more people to vote and be a part of the voting populace.
Do more to get out there and make a difference.
Every vote counts.
If you didn't think every vote counts, look at what we ended up having in Washington.
because people just didn't go out to the polls.
And if you like what's happening, you're in a minority.
If you want to see something change, let's get out and vote.
It makes a whole lot of difference.
Jim and I will give you an amen on that.
And also just as a side note, since we did talk about the state income tax, I did reach out several times to Senator Josh Harkins, who is the chair of the finance committee.
I have reached out to him and hopefully we will hear back from him because I wanted to also get his take on this as well.
Yeah, that'd be great.
That'd be great.
Thank you.
Jim, what you got?
There's a lot of tariffs going on right now.
And I heard a piece yesterday, I don't know where it was, but it was from Milton Friedman.
And he talked about a pencil and the thousands of people that it takes to make that pencil from the wood to the lead to the paint to the little brass.
thing that goes around at the top to the erasure.
And it brought back to me the...
old saying that we've so many of us have heard that it takes a village to raise a child.
Well, it takes a village to make government work and a village has to work together to make that happen.
And we need more of that.
And for your work, I appreciate everything you've done, Mr.
Johnson.
Don't give up the ship.
It's worth fighting for.
And we'll be right there with you.
And like I said, if there's an issue you want to come on and talk about, you know how to get in touch with us.
Come on, come on.
Come on.
Well, with that, once again, Representative Johnson, it was great to have you here.
was an honor to have you here.
Jim, good to see you.
We do appreciate our viewers, our sponsors, and we do want to leave you with this message.
May we never become indifferent to the suffering of others.
Thank you.
Thank you all for having me.
Look forward to doing it again.