Welcome to this edition of Mississippi Happenings podcast.
My name is David Olds and here with me is my cohost, Jim Newman.
Hello, Jim.
Hello David.
Good to see you.
This week, uh absolutely.
Seen and viewed.
um Interesting, I like that.
This week, we want to continue our discussion about the issues and concerns facing all Mississippians.
Our guest today is former Democratic Governor Ronnie Musgrove.
Governor Musgrove
grew up in Sardis, Mississippi, the northern part of the state.
He attended Northwest Mississippi Community College in San Antonio, graduated from Ole Miss, and received his law degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law.
He began his political career as a state senator, District 10, representing Tate and Palo Alto counties.
During that time, he was appointed vice chair of the Senate's University and College Committee.
and made a member of the Education Committee.
In 1996, he was elected Lieutenant Governor.
During this time, he named several African-American senators to chair several Senate committees, including Judiciary, Constitution, Elections, and University and College.
As governor, he launched the
excuse me, AMI program, which is the Advantage Mississippi Initiative to create new jobs for the state and brought Nissan to the Jackson area, which is still considered, this
initiative is still considered to be the largest economic development project in Mississippi history.
It also led the way for Toyota
to come to Blue Springs.
Governor Musgrove, it is an honor and a pleasure to have you with us today.
We admire your dedication and commitment to the underserved and to all Mississippians.
Thank you for being with us.
You left out he's also a lieutenant governor.
Well, thank you very much.
I appreciate being with you.
Only one correction that I would point out in your introduction, I was born in Sardis, but was actually raised in Batesville.
So my friends at South Pennola would not be appreciative if I didn't recognize that I am a graduate of the University of South Pennola.
Yes, thank you.
Thank you for that.
In 1996, yes, you were elected Lieutenant Governor.
I want to start a discussion today about with public education.
During your tenure, you were known as an education governor.
In July of 2001, you signed a bill that implemented the largest pay increase for teachers.
and basically elevating it to the the oh salary range of the southeastern advantage.
ah And you also were very implemental and with the Mississippi adequate education program.
So please share your thoughts with us about public education.
Well, to me, the difference maker for any community in any state is their level of public education.
In order to have a workforce that functions, that's attractive, that can get the job done, you have to have very good public schools.
And to me, uh a career starts through the schoolhouse doors and through education.
Unfortunately, Mississippi is the only state in the nation right now that does not have pre-K provided by the state.
And I believe that is a real drawback because so much is dependent on early childhood development.
There have been too many studies that would show that.
So my feeling all along was that the better that our public schools could be, the better that our economic opportunity could be in the state.
So I took it upon myself to do two or three things.
Number one, you want to have the best teachers possible in the classroom.
And there is no secret to the fact that if the better you pay a person in a particular field, the more people you're going to attract at a better level.
So it always made sense to me to make the pay as high as possible.
I'd always...
It's strange to me that people will complain about paying a teacher $50,000 a year, and that they only work nine months, and yet will pay a football player $100 million for 16
games.
It's just amazing to me that we can't make a distinction between what's important in the welfare of our state and our country for that matter.
So to me, teacher pay was important, benefits were important.
When I was elected in 1988 to the Senate, or was sworn in in 88, the starting salary for teachers in Mississippi was $13,500, no healthcare benefits.
Now that's not the dark ages.
I recognize I'm gray headed, I recognize I'm old, but that's just not the dark ages.
And so we've come a long way.
I opted to be able to health insurance, and then that teacher pay raise was important.
Also, I felt like that technology and computers in the classroom were extremely important.
So we were the first state in the nation to put internet accessible computers in every classroom.
A lot of people don't realize that, but when you look back at it, there's a lot that we still need to do because of connectivity and the delta and in other rural parts of our
state.
but I thought that was important.
The last thing that I would say about the MAEP Act, which is the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, is that if you looked at the school districts at the time, and you
looked at the local tax base, the state provides so much funding for essential programs, and then if you've got a tax base that's over and above that, then you can add
additional classes for students.
And I use the example of Noxubee County.
Let's just say that Noxubee County had the best teachers in America.
And you had Tupelo that likewise had the best teachers in America.
Noxubee County could offer only 74 types of classes because of their local ad valorem taxes.
Tupelo on the other hand offered 140.
So right off the bat, even with the best teachers in the country, Tupelo would be getting a far superior educated student than Noxubee could provide just by the course offerings.
And so that's why I thought that the property poor districts needed the additional help from the state to be able to provide
at least what we would call the substantial minimum of a quality education.
Gotcha.
One of the things that we're hearing a lot about today is the school vouchers, school choice.
ah We had a good conversation with Jack Reed Jr.
about the desegregation process in Mississippi.
And it appears the things that...
the same things that was said in the 50s, the 60s, and the 70s about school vouchers, school choice, uh is what we're hearing about today.
What are your thoughts about that with school choice?
Well, one of the things that you wanted to do with schools is to raise the accountability for everyone and then be able to provide the funding necessary to get those done.
Then if a school doesn't do that, then you know it's not money, it is the leadership, it's the teachers, and it's everyone else.
But when you don't have sufficient money, you can always use the excuse or always say,
We can't provide as good an education unless we've got sufficient money.
But when you allow students to take vouchers away from schools and only go to the school of their choice, then you've done two things.
Number one, if you don't provide transportation with that, then you've only allowed the student who can afford transportation to go to another school.
And then when you...
allow that child to leave with that school voucher, you have lost a good student in that district that always can provide some help to the district.
So I believe that it doesn't accomplish what needs to be accomplished because a school can always say, can't take but 10 students and they get to selectively choose which students
and the others can't go.
And I just feel like that the focus needs to be on improving schools, not having children go to different schools all across the state.
Gotcha.
What is your thoughts on Mississippi losing $137 million due to the Department of Education?
And having said that, I do want to oh share that I was very pleased with the letter that I think was Philip Birchfield or maybe Lance
Evans wrote to Linda McMahon.
But what's your thoughts about losing $137 million in funding for schools?
devastating to Mississippi, devastating to our schools and to our students.
You know, there's so many things that our schools provide that our government provides that unless we're a part of it, we don't think about the importance.
For instance, there are so many families with special needs children.
If you don't have a special needs child, you forget how important it is
for the school to be able to provide the special needs things for children.
If a child gets sick at school, 50 of our school nurses were paid for out of that money.
Those school nurses are going to be lost.
All of those things make up for a better quality education that we're going to lose and not have.
And that's just not good for our schools and it's not good for our children.
And when you keep taking away dollar after dollar after dollar from our schools, then what you're going to have is you're going to have a shell of a school system that can't provide
the education that our children need.
Yeah, it's it's.
m
Education is so very important.
Governor, back when you were governor, President Bush signed in the No Child Left Behind Act.
And Mississippi was already behind.
Have we caught up, any?
Like you said, we don't have kindergarten.
I know Kathy Grace has worked long and many hours.
as you have trying to get the legislature to come up with the funds for kindergarten.
And the numbers are there that show we need it.
whatever happened to No Child Left Behind, it seems like we're leaving a lot of them behind these days.
Kathy Grace is a great warrior for better schools, for better opportunities for children.
Her and my late wife co-chaired the early childhood school at the University of Mississippi and did a lot of good work together.
That's one of the reasons that I know that early childhood education is so important.
President Bush had the right idea when he focused on education.
However, the implementation was left up to the states in so many areas.
In the time where I was in office, we improved substantially from some of our rankings and ratings that instead of being 48th, 49th, and 50th, we were in the 30s or we were in the
20s and several.
And in fact, in accountability, we were number 11th in the country on improved accountability.
So a lot of good things were happening, but education is not something you can snap your finger with or accomplish overnight.
It is a steady investment of effort and time and dollars into helping your children become what they need to become at the time.
For instance, Jim, I'm saying this because I feel sure you're the oldest one on this podcast, or a podcast, but I'm just missing that.
But I remember when my mom and dad would talk about in 1952 when they were working, 75 % of people who worked in Mississippi did not have to have more than a high school education
to get a good job.
But you all know that times change, things change, technology changes, and therefore our education opportunities have to change as well.
And so instead of changing, improving and making ourselves more adaptable to our work world over the last couple of decades, we probably have stayed more stagnant than
improving in the areas where we needed to improve.
Now we've had some improvements in some areas, but some of those improvements were just to catch up where the average state has been in the rest of the country.
So we need to have a constant improvement and investment in our schools.
And unless that happens, we will continue to fall further and further behind.
And let me say this on two particular personal notes.
I mentioned special needs a minute ago.
I have a grandson with special needs.
And that grandson is in North Carolina.
And my children tell me that what is provided in North Carolina is so much more.
than what we provide here.
If you've got a child with special needs, that's something that you consider.
That's something that you think about.
People without special needs may not think about those areas.
But if you don't think that there are a lot of people with children with special needs, just look around and you'll probably find one in your own family somewhere, or if not
multiple.
So that's one thing that's very important to me.
And I think that it's important to note that and the investment just cannot be overstated about what we need to do to help opportunity for our children.
See ya.
I don't quite know how to say it.
It seems to me like Mississippi has, at least Northern Mississippi, I'm not that familiar with the southern portion, but the northern part of Mississippi, Golden Triangle area.
north ah has certainly been a
place for industry to locate and manufacture.
And it seems to me that manufacturing is just not where we want to be.
But I'm not sure what the alternative is that we should be looking at.
To me, one of the things that was important was to attract an automobile company or manufacturing along those lines because I felt like it provided a much better opportunity,
a much better wage, and a much better future.
But our economic development strategy was so far behind, we could not even be competitive.
Jimmy Heidel, who was the former director
of our economic development effort in Mississippi said that for eight years he had been trying to get in the front door to meet with car manufacturers across the world to
consider coming here.
And because of our structure, we never could get in the front door.
So that was the first thing that I did as governor is that we called a special session to revamp our economic development strategy to provide the kinds of incentives that would
bring the kind of
jobs today into the state.
And within 90 days, we located Nissan into our state, which is accounted for over 30,000 jobs in Mississippi.
And I might say in North Mississippi, there were people from all 82 counties working at Nissan in Canton, Mississippi.
So it does say it had an economic impact for everyone.
But Jim, what we have to do is there's always, what are we doing now?
What's the transition area for new jobs?
And what's the future?
The future definitely looks like to me that it's going to involve technology in some shape, form or fashion.
So to me, we need to make sure that we're training and educating people in the world of technology.
That's why I was so big after listening to Bob Pittman,
uh who has done such a great job in terms of business and industry across the country, that he said, this was 30 years ago, he said, there's going to come a time where there
won't be any textbooks, there won't be any workbooks, it'll all be on a computer on a desk.
Well, it was hard for me to even imagine that, but I bought into it.
And now as I'm sitting here and I'm thinking about how much my grandchildren have to school me on technological advances and all, now I don't feel like I'm much different from
a lot of other people.
I realized that technology is something that while it may create some problems, it also creates a world of opportunity.
So we have to be consistent with what the market is going to bear or to bring to us.
And we've got to be competitive in that arena.
I've always wondered right down the road from Tupelo, ah not too many miles, is a school that every year puts out an electric car that goes all over the place, wins national
championships, wins national competitions and everything else.
And yes.
And why is it we cannot?
persuade some companies that Mississippi is ready for their technology.
Well, every company that looks at locating looks at the metrics of the results of the schools in Mississippi.
And here's one of the things that if you just take North Mississippi as an example, and I know where that school is that you're talking about.
But let's say what it appears to be the result right now is
that we have six or eight communities that are great communities, that are funded well, they have good local ad valorem taxes, but you can't just fund those areas for schools and
education and think that you're going to help the economic welfare of the rest of the state.
For instance, when you don't adequately fund education, towns like Amory,
towns like Baldwin, Boonville, Corinth, and the list just goes on and on and on.
They don't get adequately funded because those local areas do not have the tax base that, a Tupelo has, that a Southaven has, that a Madison has.
And so consequently, that's why
The Mississippi adequate education program is so important to make sure that every community can provide quality educated people that companies look to and say, this is what
we need.
And so that's why I think it's so important that we invest across the board for our state so that we have a vibrant state, not just a few vibrant communities.
Jim and I were looking at the counties that were losing the $137 million.
DeSoto County, where I live, lost zero.
But the counties that you just mentioned, they were hit the hardest.
Jim?
Yes, they were.
I forgot what I was going to.
Oh, you were elected as a senator.
You were a lieutenant governor.
You were a governor.
You ran against Roger Wicker.
I mean, you know how to run campaigns.
How do we elect people that think like you do about education?
It's.
very discouraging to me anyway.
And it's gotta be a joke around the country to hear that the Mississippi legislature has a bill ah creating, ah what was it David, vigilantes?
The vigilante committee or?
for to there was a bounty hunter.
Are you talking about the bounty hunter for for immigrants?
That, mean, what does it take to get people's attention to bring about this change?
think it's at least two things, One, parents have got to demand that their children be educated.
Is it demand their children or everybody's children?
Well, if all parents demanded that their children, then you would catch all of the children.
So I say that in a pluralistic uh kind of way, but demand that our children be educated, all of our children.
Secondly, if you look at the numbers of our people, especially young people who are leaving the state, it is staggering.
We're one of only two states in the country that over the last several years
we've actually lost population.
And it's mainly through young people because they don't see opportunity here.
And until our leadership in the state and in the legislature make the connection that good schools and good education equals good job opportunities and better economic growth, then
it's hard for the state to have that.
And I remember when several parents have looked at me in complete disgust and said, Musgrove, my child is moving to Austin, Texas.
My child is moving to Nashville, Tennessee.
My child is moving to Little Rock.
And the list goes on and on.
And yet we want our young people to stay here in our state, make our state a better place.
But unless we have leadership that actually
puts that position forward and fights for education and making education a priority, it just won't happen.
Well, you mentioned something that caught my attention and I've thought about it over the past several years.
The state puts out incentives for companies to move into the state.
Why do they never require those companies to hire ah the top graduating students in
the particular fields that this company happens to operate to make it a requirement for that money.
I mean, it would be a top salary, it'd be a great job, and we would keep some of this talent.
oh Two things I might add, uh Jim, to your question oh in connection.
One, when we recruited Nissan here, we had never had an automobile manufacturer.
And so I looked at Carlos Ghosn and the leadership of Nissan and said, I know you're going to have to bring people in because we don't have any leadership in automotive technology.
What percentage
percent of the 5,800 direct employees will you need to bring in from outside.
And he said about 3%.
So in our memorandum of agreement, Nissan is required to hire 97 % of its employees from Mississippi.
I'm not sure that has been done in any other scenario.
Congratulations on that.
Thank you.
We were, I know it's not in the oh Toyota facility in Blue Springs.
But secondly, one of the reasons that we won out, particularly over Alabama, is that Mississippi State was producing more and better engineers that were needed by Nissan than
they said that the counterparts in Alabama were providing.
As an Ole Miss graduate, I've never been more proud of Mississippi State than that day when they told me that.
And I felt like that that was really important.
And so it goes to show you, I mean, on a microeconomic level, that those things are important to companies looking at your state.
So if we don't invest in our K through 12 schools and our pre-K through 12 and in our universities,
then we're losing part of the economic incentive and production that companies look at.
And to me, that's really, really important.
And there are things you can require companies to do.
And we were able to accommodate and require certain things that I thought made a difference for Mississippi and for Nissan.
Let's talk about healthcare for just a second and I'm looking at one of your quotes and oh this is the last sentence.
One of the most important, we're talking about things that companies look for when coming to a state and you said one of most important is a strong and sound healthcare system in
the communities where employees will work and live.
talk a little bit about healthcare.
We have an expanded Medicaid and one of the, and I'm quoting you again, hope you don't mind.
The other thing you said, that's okay.
This is, liked, I love this.
And we're talking about expanded Medicaid by accepting federal funds for healthcare.
And you said Mississippi participates in federal matching programs.
for everything from preserving the post-Civil War home of Jefferson Davis to beaver control.
But we won't do it for healthcare?
Well, we do it for health care, just not to the greatest extent that you could do so.
Mississippi, in the regular delivery of Medicaid, gets a three-to-one match, and I think we're the only state in the nation that gets that match.
But also, the highest percentage of our National Guard budget is from the federal side, while the highest percent of our transportation and highway dollars from the federal side.
And you can go on and on and on about every area that we have.
So all of a sudden to take the position that one part of healthcare is not good enough, doesn't make any sense.
Right now, unfortunately, Congress is considering a bill that could reduce Medicaid dollars by $880 billion.
And a lot of people
I think lose sight of what the expansion of healthcare via Medicaid would actually do.
People who don't have employment, who cannot do anything else, who are extremely poor, are already on Medicaid.
What the expansion of Medicaid would have done is it would have allowed people that worked at the auto zone, at the Kroger, at the cleaner,
and you just keep going on and on about all of your businesses where they don't provide health care and the people working there can't afford the premiums for health care.
And so what is happening now is that the hospitals and the clinics through the emergency rooms are having to eat that cost because they can't pay and there is no payer via
Medicaid.
to help the hospitals sustain.
That's why Mississippi has the highest percentage of hospitals that are almost at closure than any other state in the nation.
And so that's why it doesn't make any sense to me for us not to expand healthcare via Medicaid.
It's the lowest cost, produced the highest number of jobs, and would provide healthcare to people all across our state.
I would really, really like to see our leadership in our state to provide Medicaid expansion.
But I will tell you this much, if Congress is successful at reducing Medicaid by 800 plus billion dollars, the states that will be most affected negatively will be southern states.
It will be states that have higher percentage of
social economic disadvantaged people.
And in Mississippi, a lot of people do not realize that the greatest single share of Medicaid dollars are spent on nursing home people.
you're talking, and then if you want to look even further at our racial makeup in our state, the highest percentage of people in our nursing home happen to be white people.
And so you start looking at all of the things why you ought to be supportive of helping everyone.
Our minority, our white, all citizens of Mississippi need healthcare.
And if we're going to cut back on healthcare and cut back on the reimbursement, you're going to reduce the number of hospitals you have.
You're going to reduce the number of providers, the doctors and nurses.
And then you're going to reduce the number of nursing homes that you have as well.
None of those bode well for the future of the state.
Well, we have a 600 bed hospital here in Tupelo, but only 300, roughly 300 beds are in use.
So there you go.
uh One of the things that, go ahead.
I was gonna say one of the things we could do to help with our healthcare delivery is to really upgrade our entire system of healthcare delivery.
One of my good friends just had hip replacement surgery yesterday morning.
Now, 30 or 40 years ago, when that happened,
a person spent three to five days in a hospital.
Yesterday morning though, he did like almost every other person who has had surgery.
He went in at five o'clock, had the surgery at six o'clock, was on his way home by 10 o'clock.
a grand total of about four hours.
So the hospital beds are not needed anymore like they used to be needed.
So we need to develop with the COE and law a different way to use the license for other purposes of healthcare delivery, not just overnight hospital stays.
Very true, we've tried to eh get Mr.
Robert Robertson with the hospital association and so far we haven't been successful, but we're gonna continue to try.
I'll encourage Richard to join you.
We'd love to talk to him.
One of the things I, and I don't know whether you heard this this morning or not, but Ted Cruz and another Senator were on, they were talking about a new program that Senator Cruz
ah says is going well in the house.
And to me, it kind of sounds like,
a good plan on the front end.
And I've only had a few hours to think about it, but roughly the program is every child born in America will receive a $1,000 in an account.
And businesses and parents, grandparents can contribute to that up through the age of 18.
At an age 18, they have two choices.
They can take half of it to start a business or they can take all of it to go to college.
But what Cruz says it does is it creates capitalists, not socialists, because they are invested in the economy.
It sounds good on the front end, but.
I'm just really suspicious of anything.
And he was asked if it would have any effect on social security.
And he said, no, that's entirely separate.
That by the age of 35, ah you would have a child that was born pretty close to being a millionaire.
ah And then when he got to be 65, he would, because of the compounding interest, et cetera.
Does that sound like?
Any kind of a
plan to get kids involved?
Yes, the numbers are a little inflated, but if Senator Cruz could get that passed, I would be celebrating with him.
I just wish I could have gotten my Republican colleagues to support that idea when I was in office.
The foremost person in the country that advocated that program was a professor at Washington in St.
Louis.
I went up and visited with him and spent a day with him.
to try to develop that program because there are so many children that are in poverty or that are close to poverty that it would be uh savings account that their parents never
could give them.
Out of all the monies we spend as a government on children and or people who do need help, this is the one of the best investments that you could have.
And we developed
white papers on this subject so that I won't claim to be an extensive expert at it, but I can assure you I knew a good bit about it at the time we were oh working with it that I
believe it would be an excellent opportunity for children all across the country.
Senator Cruz talks like it has a good chance ah of passing in the House.
He said he didn't know.
He hadn't done his numbers.
though, I get cautious because then I don't think the percentages are as high as I would like them to be, but maybe he can be the exception.
You mentioned Washington University.
ah I just might mention, ah you probably don't know her, but her name is Virginia Tolliver.
She used to be the librarian at Washington University.
And we are having a podcast with her ah on Thursday afternoon.
And I was talking to her and she said, well, what are we going to talk about?
And I said, well, we're going to talk about your upbringing.
And she said, well, you know,
I never went to a school that wasn't all black.
And I said, well, that's what we're going to talk about.
Did you have as good a teachers?
Did you have?
new school books.
Did you, what was it like?
Because you have the stories that are going to be forgotten unless we can record them.
ah So it was interesting that you mentioned Washington University.
Well, Washington University is an outstanding university with a great academic background.
But one of the things I was trying to say a minute ago is that today we have allowed race to get so polarizing that it's not just under the table, it's above the table.
It is brazen in the way that things happen.
This assault on DEI has been...
one of the most dumbfounding things that I've seen oh pushed and to a successful level, unfortunately, that I've seen.
But when you've got a state that is not a homogeneous state, and Mississippi is one in most all of our states are that way, then the policies and programs and things you do, you
need them to be beneficial to everyone, not
just a certain segment of society.
And a lot of people, times people, don't even realize who are the real recipients and beneficiaries of a lot of the programs that we have.
That's what I was trying to say.
And one of the things about diversity, equity, and inclusion, it also affects people with disabilities.
It affects, negatively affects children and adults with disabilities.
But that's something you don't hear about, you know, in the news, in the media.
I've, go ahead, Governor.
No, I was just going to say that when we can put, or if we could ever get to the point that we could put aside what a person looks like or who they are and recognize that all
people have significant quality contributions and everybody is entitled to the benefits that are offered by our federal constitution and our state constitution.
And if we could look at programs that way, then we would remove a lot of the headaches that all of us have to deal with so much of the time.
think that's that's all David and I can do.
We're so incapacitated that we have this program in an attempt to get people like you out there to help educate people on what's going on and what happened and why it happened and
what needs to happen.
So really appreciate all the work that you've done.
you care to make any comment or not about it.
But, and if you don't, that's fine.
Whatever happened to that beef program, that beef plant that failed or what was that?
what it was, think two of our representatives, one was Billy McCoy, who at that time he was not a speaker of the House, but he was chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, I
believe, and Representative Tommy Reynolds from Charleston, who had Oakland in his district, had gotten together with our commissioner of agriculture and it seemed like that
They were all Mississippi State connected and had an agricultural background and that the cull cows were a big proposition at the time.
So that was a bill that they put together that they passed, that it passed 174 to nothing.
I signed it, was a good economic opportunity.
Well, as it turned out, it went belly up and I think the state at the time had lost 35
million dollars as a result of that happening.
But I might tell you that the state retained the ownership of the facilities.
The state repurposed it and recruited another industry in.
And I might tell you that every penny of the debt that was owed has been paid off.
Well, the state has been made 100 % whole.
versus solar projects and all that are in Horn Lake, that are in Columbus, that are in other areas, that I think that I am not exaggerating when I say that there's at least 150
to $200 million that the state has written off, that we don't own the facilities anymore and there's no way to recoup oh the money that was lost on those subsequent projects after
I left.
Jeez.
just, didn't know.
I'm still trying to figure out.
was cull, cattle.
Cull cattle is a term that I didn't grow up with and I didn't know anything about.
So I left it up to the Commissioner of Agriculture, Billy McCoy and them to try to figure it out.
And obviously it was not as good a deal as it should have been.
Well, you know, if you don't try, you never know.
the state got its money back.
That's it.
ah With a few minutes left, do we want to talk about the ah state income tax elimination?
You got, what's your thoughts on that, Governor?
What you always want to do is you want to try to get the right balance or mix between income for the state and what the state does.
A lot of times people just forget about the fact that we all need government at some point in time.
What is scary to me is now you have
the administration in Washington talking about doing away with FEMA.
Now, if you are a Mississippian and you have any age on you at all, all you have to do is go back a few years and think about all of the hurricanes that we've had.
Katrina being possibly the worst, Campbell being the worst in terms of death.
And if we had not had federal help with those, I wonder what our state would look like.
And that is a part of government that we need.
I don't know how the state would be able to make up the difference between what FEMA would do.
All right, so if you want to have a goal for the state to have a certain education quality, a certain healthcare quality, a certain job opportunity quality, quality of life
living,
then there's a certain amount of dollars it is going to take to do that.
You can get that money from taxes or you can get it from economic opportunity or activity that is a result of tax benefits.
The smart people that I have seen cut taxes always did so in an effort to improve economic opportunity.
President Clinton is one of the people that I might
point to that when they passed the significant bill, I think it was in 2004, maybe, yes, or 2006, with some welfare reform opportunities, some tax cuts, some very targeted tax
cuts, and you look at what it produced, President Clinton is the only one in modern times that actually reduced our national debt from about $6.5 trillion
to 4.9 trillion, or we'll say five.
Just think about what $5 trillion would look like today instead of $36 trillion that we held as national debt.
But the tax cuts were targeted.
I am hard pressed to think that just the clear and sheer elimination of the income tax, which for most people, the highest is 4 % in Mississippi,
would offset or produce enough economic opportunity.
I've not seen anybody, including our state economist, our state fiscal officer, or any other economist that can show where that cut would in fact produce that kind of economic
oh activity that would refill our state coffers, so to speak, so that it would be an even swap, so to speak, in terms of dollars and cents.
Well, at one point in your tenure as governor, I believe you said, or it was reported that 62 % of the state budget went to education.
Well, if we eliminate the income tax, that 62 % is gone.
It is not 62%.
Today, I can tell you with Ole Miss as a resident of Oxford, and I think this is also true for Mississippi State and the rest of the universities, when I was in the state
legislature, we funded universities, and know at Ole Miss particularly, at over 60%.
Now, the exact percent, I don't remember.
But today, Ole Miss receives about
12 to 15 % of its funding from the state and not 60%.
And people wonder why the tuition has gone up so much because that's one of the major ways they have of offsetting the loss of state dollars.
So there is always a cost if you're cutting the dollars that are going to the state with what you can do with them.
And the programs like education and others will see it.
if you don't offset that with economic activity to bring in additional dollars.
And I just haven't seen that up until this point.
Well, we're getting a little late into the show, but let me just ask you, in your spare time,
What projects are you working on now?
ah
What are you thinking about needs to be done and what are you working on?
We're working to try to keep some rural hospitals open, which is a tough, tough job.
can tell you that right now.
oh Also, I'm working on giving all of my papers from all of my time in office to the University of Mississippi archive.
And so I'm in the process of going through all of those papers and looking at so many of the things that we did that reminds me of, I think, some
really, really good projects and programs oh that I think that we need to reconsider.
uh Also, I'm working on a couple of books that I believe would help oh us to reconsider the things that I think are important uh for us to have as a state.
I'm kind of like the librarian at Washington University, oh you know.
uh
My mother went to the 10th grade in school and my dad, I think, made it to the eighth grade in school.
uh No reflection on their intellectual ability because they were very smart people.
And when my mother's favorite author was William Faulkner and she had read every book that William Faulkner had ever written, I realized how much smarter she was than I was because
I struggled to understand William Faulkner and I'm right here in the seat of William Faulkner's
hometown and I understand that.
But what it does say is it says for me that I recognized early on at their encouragement that getting a good education was so important to what I wanted to do in life.
And had I not listened to them and had I not bought into the idea that school was my best opportunity, I can assure you, you would not be talking to me today.
oh And I feel so fortunate that I did.
And I think that what has happened now that we've gotten third and fourth and fifth generation college graduates that are now in office, you forget about what's important and
how you got there because you think to yourself, my children will be perfectly fine.
Well, they don't need any extra help, oh but we all need help.
at some point in time.
Like I said, we all need government at some point in time in order to get by.
And to me, I mean, it's just like right now, if you don't think you need government, then don't get on an airplane today.
If you don't think you need government, don't get on a highway today.
And part of what we're doing, Jim, is that we're so short-sighted on the big things that our country needs.
Like the Secretary of the FAA is saying that all of our radar equipment is so old that we can't use it.
Where are we in a bipartisan way, everyone saying we need to fix this.
We need to invest the amount of money that it takes to make sure that we make the sky safe and the airport safe and that the people flying, which are millions of Americans from all
walks of life.
Those are the things that we need to focus on.
And I think that we're being short-sighted and not focusing on.
Right.
The FAA has never been.
really overseen and funded as well as it should have been.
My background's in aviation.
And it's long overdue.
It's not Trump.
It's not our previous president.
It goes back for years.
ah We've just been living with what we've got.
It's a bipartisan issue to invest in the country and those things that really do matter.
And that's one of them that do.
Cybersecurity is another.
Like I said, you just go on and on at the things that are really not controversial in terms of what we need.
It's just having the will to do it.
How do we manage to potholes and aviation and hospitals and all these?
How do we manage to make those political?
It has always puzzled me.
They have to work hard at making it political, but they do.
No, you know, it's just like everything else.
If you're not trying to work together, and I'm still the optimistic person who believes we can work together, and it's so bothersome to watch in Washington now, nobody's reaching
out to the other side.
Going this alone, and that's just not the way to govern.
We need the benefit of different thinkers and people who believe in our country and can move our country forward.
And I guess that if it's politically advantageous for one party over another to make a hospital the enemy, or to make a school the enemy, or to make an aviation tower at a
certain city the enemy, I guess they do.
It's sad that they have such small brains.
It is.
It's been wonderful talking to you, Governor.
It's been a pleasure to talk with you all.
Good, good.
do appreciate your...
Governor, any last thoughts for us?
Anything that you want our subscribers to hear or any last words from you?
just simply say that that you all are in North Mississippi, but you could just as easily be in South Mississippi in two locations that are very similar to where you are right now.
Uh, and our state is not made up of six or eight communities.
It's made up of 82 counties of a lot of good towns and cities across the state that I believe when we work together and try to make the entire state
a better community and better place to live, then the whole state sees those results.
Thank you.
and I hope you spread the word that we're not bad guys.
We're not out to do hatchet jobs on anybody.
ah
What did you call us?
do hope that you get people from across the board.
You know, I have such good friends across the board that we still work together and I'm so grateful that we can work together.
And I just wish that we would do it on a larger macroscape.
If you have any suggestions.
us?
Incapacitated or something?
What was that earlier?
Incapacitated.
Jeez.
didn't buy that word when he said it, but I thought I knew what he meant.
Well Jim, what about you?
What you got?
Last words.
Gosh, Governor, if you've got some friends across the aisle, we'd love to talk with them.
If you could, if you felt free enough to ah put in a word for us, we'd appreciate it.
Sure, I'll be glad to do something.
Thank you.
We do want to thank our sponsors.
We do want to thank our subscribers.
We do appreciate your continued support.
Please share this ah link to all of your friends and all on your social media.
And ah I have one last quote, ah Governor.
I've got one last quote, and this is part
I can tell.
I have, I have.
I've moved it around in the script, but this is perfect to end in this.
And you said, if you are fortunate in life, age and knowledge, breed compassion.
And that's the thing that we are missing now in Mississippi and we're missing it across the nation.
So thank you for that.
Enjoy it.
Thank you.
thank you.
much.
Have a good week, Governor.
Thank you, same to you.
Okay.