When will Arizona voters get wise to Arizona's sorry excuse for a Legislature?
The Arizona Senate reportedly returns to the state Capitol this week after a chock-full month of doing, well nothing much, actually.
This, following four arduous months of doing … well…
I say senators "reportedly' are returning on May 28 because the Arizona House returned on May 20 after a two-week break wherein House Speaker Steve Montenegro promptly announced another two-week recess.
It seems budget negotiations – those conversations that take place among a select few with absolutely no public input – aren't going so well.
Heaven forbid our leaders get themselves to the Capitol and hear from the public before deciding how to spend our money.
Or address a few of the bigger issues plaguing our state.
Like a shortage of houses that people can actually afford.
Or our crying need to protect what water we have and to find new sources of the stuff.
Or the fact that $300 million in dedicated education funding will disappear on June 30, as Proposition 123 expires.
For several years, our leaders have kicked that particular can down the road and now we've reached the end of it. Lawmakers will either have to find the $300 million in lost Prop. 123 funding elsewhere (as they have pledged to do) or stiff the schools.
Republicans want to tie an extension of Prop. 123 to school vouchers. Basically, they want to hold Arizona's public schools hostage unless voters agree next year to protect Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, declaring that parents have a constitutional right to public money to pay their kids' private school tuition tab.
Still, it's not like legislators haven't done anything in the first 134 days of what is supposed to be a 100-day session.
They did pass a bill mandating that high school students be taught about the Gulf of America — a bill that Gov. Katie Hobbs promptly vetoed.
And they established a Turquoise Alert system for missing Indigenous people, a bill that Hobbs signed.
But they, with Hobbs' help, also trampled the constitutional rights of Scottsdale voters so that Axon, which makes Tasers, can build the state's largest apartment complex, voiding a successful campaign to put the issue to a public vote.
And they spent a fair amount of time scheming to cut care for the state's most seriously disabled children, though in the end they didn't have the votes to discontinue to the Parents as Paid Caregivers program.
Opinion: It took a seventh-grader to break Arizona's fight over disabled funding
Fortunately, the Legislature still has a month to consider the affairs of state.
Like the growing number of working Arizona parents who can't afford decent daycare and are on the Department of Economic Security's waitlist to get a childcare subsidy. The Legislature will either help those 4,500 children as part of their secret budget negotiations or tell their parents to suck it.Yeah, I'm thinking the latter is likely.
You know who will have no trouble getting help? Ken Kendrick, the bazillionaire owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks and one of the state's biggest contributors to Republican politicians.
Look for our leaders to pony up a massive subsidy to fix up Chase Field. The only real question is whether they will use only tax money generated by the team or reach more deeply into our pocket.Oh, I know. It is our sacred obligation to provide the team with $500 million — possibly double that once interest is factored in — to renovate the publicly owned ballpark built for a team that now worth $1.6 billion, according to Forbes.
One that Kendrick, bought for $238 million in 2004.
Opinion: Deal to keep the Arizona Diamondbacks is a beanball aimed at taxpayers
We either pay up or lose the team and the Valley will become a sports wasteland and little children will suffer because they want to be taken out the ballgame, but alas, there won't be one.
Yeah, don't lay awake tonight worrying about the baseball team.
Our leaders have their priorities, after all, and I'm confident that before June is out, they'll come up with a way to help the D-backs.
The kids, not so much.
Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz, on Threads at @LaurieRobertsaz and on BlueSky at @laurieroberts.bsky.social.
Subscribe to azcentral.com today.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: AZ Senate returns. Will housing, school issues be fixed? | Opinion
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
9 minutes ago
- Fox News
'He's not a big factor': Trump's Senate allies dismiss Elon Musk's calls to 'kill the bill'
Elon Musk's diatribe against President Donald Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" continued Wednesday as Senate Republicans embarked on their own course to tweak and reshape the gargantuan legislative package. The former head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rehashed a similar talking point from his takedown of a previous House GOP government funding bill in December, which, after his input, was gutted and reworked. The nation's debt sits at over $36 trillion, according to FOX Business' National Debt Tracker. "Call your Senator, Call your Congressman," Musk said among a flurry of posts on X. "Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL." Though Musk's continued tirade against the bill sent House Republicans into a tizzy, on the other side of the Capitol, senators were busy hashing out the finer points of the legislation. This time around, Musk, who just ended his four-month tenure as a special government employee rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, may not have the same level of impact, given that senators want their chance to shape the bill. "I mean, if Elon was going to give me advice on how to get to the moon, I'd listen," said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D. "You know, if he was going to give me advice on how to raise several billion dollars from other billionaires, I'd listen." "But… he doesn't govern, you know, and so, to be honest, Elon, he's not that big a factor," he continued. "I know he's a glamorous sort of celebrity, but he's not a big factor." Cramer's comments came after Senate Republicans heard from the chairs of the Senate Banking, Armed Services and Commerce committees on how they would approach their respective portions of the megabill in a closed-door meeting. After that meeting, members of the Senate Finance Committee, which will handle the tax portion of the package, met with Trump later to shore up support for the tax package. Sen. Roger Marshall, R.-Kan., said that the president's main message during the meeting was to "pass the damn bill" with as few changes as possible. When asked if Trump seemed concerned about Musk's impact on the bill's fate, the lawmaker said "absolutely not." "It was almost laugh— more of a laughing conversation for 30 seconds," he said. "It was very much in jest and laughing, and I think he said something positive about Elon, appreciating what he did for the country." Congressional Republicans intend to use the budget reconciliation process to skirt the Senate filibuster, meaning they do not need Senate Democrats to pass the package. However, they do need at least 51 Senate Republicans to get on board. The Senate's shot at tinkering with the reconciliation package comes after months of deliberations and negotiations in the House that culminated in a package that Trump has thrown his full support behind. Some lawmakers want higher spending cuts to the tune of $2 trillion, others want a full rollback to pre-pandemic spending. Then there are pockets of resistance solidifying around cuts to Medicaid and green energy tax credit provisions baked into the House's offering. Among the green energy provisions on the chopping block are electric vehicle tax credits. Speculation has swirled that their proposed demise could be the driving force, in part, behind Musk's anger toward the bill. "Any senator with a brain sees Elon's comments for what they are, a CEO worried about losing business," a Senate Republican source told Fox News Digital. "The only reason he's causing a fuss is because we're getting rid of pork that benefits his electric car company." Musk had been pushing for deeper spending cuts until his new demand that the bill be nuked. Currently, the House GOP's offering sets a goal of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade that, coupled with expected growth, would help offset the roughly $4 trillion price tag of making the president's first-term tax cuts permanent. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, engaged with some of Musk's posts on Tuesday and appeared to agree with the tech billionaire's position that the bill had to go further to cut spending. "I think most of what he's saying is he would like it to do more and be more aggressive to try to address the debt and deficit problem," Lee said. However, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found in its latest report that the bill would only cut $1.3 trillion, reduce revenues by roughly $3.7 trillion and add in the neighborhood of $2.4 trillion to the deficit. Some lawmakers who had found common ground with Musk's earlier anger with the "big, beautiful bill" still found a common ally on the second day of his rant. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., reiterated to Fox News Digital that he shared Musk's "skepticism" of the bill. He would not say whether he agreed that congressional Republicans should start from scratch, but noted that his main objection to the bill was a plan to increase the nation's debt limit by $5 trillion. "My main goal is to say, take the debt ceiling and make it a separate vote, and then vote on a separate bill, and then there's still a need for less spending," he said. "But I would be very open to supporting the bill if we had more spending cuts and the debt ceiling was a separate vote."
New York Times
28 minutes ago
- New York Times
Tesla's Troubles
Elon Musk says he is stepping away from politics to care for his businesses, particularly Tesla. It needs the help. Tesla drove the electric-car revolution, and Musk spent nearly two decades making his image inseparable from the company. For years, Tesla seemed like a window into the future as it grew larger than the Big Three automakers in Detroit. But during — and partly because of — Musk's stint slashing government programs and laying off workers, Tesla has withered. Its stock has tumbled since President Trump's inauguration. Global sales have cratered. One blue state is nixing contracts. In Los Angeles, where I live, sheepish Tesla owners place 'Bought Before the Plot Twist' stickers on their bumpers. Today's newsletter is about how one of America's great avatars of futurism broke. A decline Tesla had a few troubles before Musk jumped into politics. The company was losing market share around the world to Chinese electric automakers like BYD, and it had abandoned plans to manufacture a completely new and cheaper model. Instead, Musk was hyping humanoid robots and self-driving taxis, technologies that seem a long way off from mainstream use. But Musk's sojourn in politics extracted a steep cost, partly by polarizing Tesla's clients. The stock price is down more than 17 percent since the start of the year, and profit fell 71 percent in the first three months of 2025. Protesters have picketed Tesla showrooms around the world. They say they intend to expand their demonstrations. People have vandalized Tesla vehicles and charging stations. A Colorado resident spray-painted 'Nazi' onto a dealership sign. In Germany (where Musk backed a far-right party) and Britain (where he said a civil war driven by migration was 'inevitable'), registrations in April of new Teslas fell to their lowest points in more than two years. Elsewhere in Europe, the story is the same. Last Friday, the agency that runs the New Jersey Turnpike said it would replace more than 60 Tesla-made electric vehicle chargers with another company's chargers. Signs of distraction abound: Musk waited for months after the Trump administration imposed tariffs to ask for a briefing at Tesla about their impact on the firm, worrying some executives. In recent months, a board member has stepped in to fill him in on day-to-day operations. Back to business Musk says he's entering a new phase. He posted on X last month that he's back to 'spending 24/7 at work.' One sign of distance from Trump: He flayed the Republicans' deficit-fattening policy bill as a 'disgusting abomination' this week. (The current proposal would end financial perks for people who buy electric cars.) Musk, who has a Forbes-estimated net worth of $415 billion, is arguably the most successful businessman of his generation. He has spent his career overcoming obstacles (few took Tesla seriously as a competitor for the Big Three when he first invested in the company in 2004) and proving doubters wrong (SpaceX invented reusable rockets). Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Calmes: The 'Trump Doctrine' revealed
'I run the country and the world,' President Trump boasted to reporters for the Atlantic in April, by way of explaining how his current presidency differs from his first. Even for the clinically braggadocious Trump, that was a mouthful. Yes, alas, he does run the country, with a bold recklessness like no president before him, and often lawlessly. He's virtually unchallenged by a supposedly co-equal Congress run by obeisant fellow Republicans who are scared of him and his voters, and he's only partly limited by federal courts that are constrained, as he's not, by fealty to the slow and deliberative rule of law. But Trump running the world? That's hardly clear. As often as not, the world seems to be running him. Yes, Trump is wielding power and forcing global leaders and foreign economies to react to his diktats. He's inflicting incalculable damage: by his hostility to the United States' longtime democratic allies and to the 80-year-old international structure that's bound them; by his shameful deference to the world's dictators; by his global trade war; and not least, by his near-wipeout of U.S. humanitarian aid resulting in the confirmed deaths of uncountable numbers of the globe's poorest people. Yet there is no peace between Ukraine and its Russian invader, despite then-candidate Trump's frequent claims he'd settle the worst European conflict since World War II even before he got to the White House. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doubling down on his scorched-earth war in Gaza, though Trump told his pal Bibi last year to end the killing, before Trump took office. Talks with Iran are reported near collapse on a deal to prevent the country from building nuclear arms, replacing the Obama-brokered pact that was doing just that before Trump scrapped it. And despite White House bluster in April about cutting 90 trade deals in 90 days, as nations pleaded for relief from Trump's tariffs, no final agreements have been announced by the self-described artist of the deal. For more than a century, as the United States evolved from an isolated giant buffered by two oceans into the world's superpower, people here and abroad have looked to American presidents' early actions and pronouncements to discern a guiding doctrine. After all, not just Americans but all the globe's residents have a stake in U.S. policies — as HIV-infected children in Africa, Ukrainian soldiers, foreign traders and consumers, and many others are sadly finding. A Trump Doctrine is easily discernible in the president's foreign policy record: It's 'Me, Myself and I.' Aside from his vague 'America First' (white) nationalist sloganeering, Trump speaks and acts in ways that reflect little appreciation for the national interest or democratic ideals. He's all about himself and his interests — increasingly, that literally means his business interests. Trump's foreign policy is strictly transactional, motivated by what's in it for him, personally and politically. Which is why, contrary to past presidents for decades, Trump twice now has made his first foreign trip as president not to allies in Europe or North America who share America's values, but to autocratic Saudi Arabia. There, and in the smaller, oil-rich Middle Eastern monarchies he also visited last month, Trump is plainly comfortable, amid the opulence and the shared language of deal-making. In fact, Trump explicitly told reporters soon after his inauguration that he'd likely travel first to Saudi Arabia — if it agreed in advance to spend about $500 billion in the United States. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gamely offered $600 billion over four years. Ultimately, Trump came home from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates boasting of bagging $5 trillion — that's trillion, with a T — or maybe $7 trillion, he said, along with a Qatari royal jet for his own use. What details there were suggested that the trade deals for which the president was taking credit — no surprise here — included some commitments dating to the Biden administration. In any case, Americans shouldn't necessarily count on the promised investments: Saudi Arabia's MBS similarly vowed to spend up to $600 billion in the United States back in 2017, when Trump first took office. Yet a study by the Arab Gulf States Initiative concluded that over Trump's first term, U.S. exports to Saudi Arabia totaled $92 billion — below the $110 billion in exports during the preceding four years under President Obama. But here's what you can count on: As the Wall Street Journal has reported, the Trump family business is signing more deals internationally than ever before, mostly in the Middle East but also in India and eastern Europe, for 12 projects including residential high-rises, luxe hotels and golf courses. Beyond real estate, there's the Trumps' $2-billion cryptocurrency deal with the United Arab Emirates state fund. America First? 'We're the hottest brand in the world right now,' son Eric Trump, who runs the Trump Organization, told the Journal. That's good, I guess, because the American brand under Trump has hit the skids. The other noxious sign of Trump's personalization of foreign policy: his constant references to foreign leaders in terms of his own relations with them. Trump's problem is that his supposed friends — the Saudis' MBS, Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping — have ideological and national interests that, unlike for Trump, transcend their personal feelings and stakes. And so MBS resists making peace with Israel, as Trump wants, if Israel won't support a Palestinian state. And Netanyahu vows he'll never do so. Xi has avoided taking a phone call with Trump to talk U.S.-China trade. Meanwhile, Putin plays Trump along in the U.S.-sponsored peace talks with Ukraine; he doesn't want peace, he wants all of Ukraine. Only Trump, then, was surprised by Putin's murderous air attacks in recent weeks. 'I've always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him,' Trump posted. 'He has gone absolutely CRAZY!' The Kremlin dismissed Trump as 'emotional.' That's what happens when you think you run the world, and the world has other ideas. @Jackiekcalmes @ @jkcalmes If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
