Thanks for tuning in to OTR.

This week, Democratic Representative Alabas Farhat, who's a member of the House Appropriations Committee, is here to talk about budgets and other stuff.

Sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the Record.

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And now this edition of Off the Record, with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for tuning in.

Like to like to say welcome to you to Off the Record.

We had a kind of a crazy news week.

We have a doctor story.

Long story short, the state of Michigan was in a pack.

An agreement to have outside docs come in.

This was at risk.

Well, right.

And I think what this story is, is a bigger story of what we've seen this year, which is not much happening.

And then waiting to the very last minute and finally looking like there's going to be passage.

I mean, the House passed the bill, the Senate, the Hous is going on a three week break.

We'll talk to the guest about that.

The Senate's back next week before their two week break.

the Senate has agreed to take it up on Tuesday.

So it looks like now there's going to be this bipartisan agreement.

But really, what was at stake here was, like, you talked about this interstate compact agreement licensure agreement.

and what was happening was it had passed the House and it passed the Senate, and there were issues about who was going to get credits on the bill.

So why do the people at home care about this?

Are you asking me?

Yes.

Because I think it's actually I well, I'm trying to give other people, you know, a moment too.

I want to hear your answer.

Why do people at home care about it.

We're hanging on your every word.

Like I said, I think it is a bigger story right now of when I. When I aske the representative this morning what's happening in the House, he said nothing.

Right.

And so this is actually something happening.

But much like minimum wage last year, it was waiting to the very last deadline.

I mean, the deadline on this was March 28th.

Kyle, Kyle, why is this important to the viewers?

It shows just gridlock in Lansing.

Thats what I was saying.

It shows the issue.

I mean, doctors in the state to keep people healthy.

So that's the short term question.

Policy Tim.

Oh I'm sorry.

I mean Mauger help me out.

I mean yeah.

You got a few thousand doctors at least, who are from somewhere other than Michigan that are practicing in Michigan, and their licensing was at risk if they don't do anything by March 28th.

That's what you're getting at, I'm guessing.

But yes, the bigger story, which is just as important, if not more important, is that the legislature is not getting anything done unless there is a drastic timeline and there are so few laws being passed that they're arguing about whose name is on the law.

But isn't it good news tha he stood in a news conference, he being the speaker of the House, and congratulated hi counterpart in the Senate, Mrs.

Brinks for getting the job done?

It's interesting that there seemed to be.

And the quote was I'm optimistic about the future.

Yeah.

Well, look, Matt Hall likes to talk about wha a dealmaker he is.

We know this.

There were multiple press conferences and one of them, he did.

He said, you know, that he worked directly.

It sounds like they even sat down together.

Matt Hall and Winnie Brinks, which if that's the case, that could be the first tim in months that the two of them have actually sat down and talked together.

I want to get to this point, though, and this is the type of deal that is typically worked out as just run of the mill, just course of business type o stuff in the state legislature.

This, this particular bill was a no brainer.

There was no way they weren' going to get this thing passed.

And in in an under normal circumstances, we would have never been even talking about it.

If that was the case, why didn't they fix it a year ag when they had a chance to do it?

Because what the what the speaker has done a great job of doing is using every little piece of legislation that comes through as leverage towards something bigger.

And this was one of those cases.

This is a crisis type situation that he could use as leverage for something else later in the leverage in this case was to get Riley Linton, who is in a politically competitive district, a significant public act, that she can go back to her district and say, I helped make sure that doctors from out of state are able to come and practice in Michigan and help you, Michiganders.

And it was because of me.

But at the end of the day, if that's the leverage that they're getting, no voters are going to care about that in November.

No, but this is inside baseball story.

It's inside baseball.

It also gave something to Hertel from the Senate who's in.

And likewise, no voter is going to be like, I'm voting for Hertel because of this bill that was passed in, in, whatever month it is, March of 2026.

To Craigs poin this is what I'm fascinated by right now, is this tit for ta and whose name gets public act.

And now when when thes elections are so nationalized.

Right.

Like, how much does something like this over the summer, particularly if the budget isn't done come summer, going and knocking on doors and saying, look what I did.

I mean how much is that actually going to affect November's election?

If you want a choice or not, you want to have something positive to say rather than nothing.

Sure.

Especially if there's no budget.

I mean, they need something for their marginal members to run on.

And I think that's one of the points that has been lost this year.

There have been so few laws passed that these marginal members they don't have a slew of bills that they worked on in the past.

You'd have a member that was in a vulnerable district that would have ten laws that they did, and they could go back and talk about, here's the bridge funding I got.

Here's a law I passed.

They'd have a list of things that they could talk about, the hours we'll go home and say three words waste, fraud and abuse.

Well that but you know, you also got to bring home some bacon too.

And, you know, this new process to to Craig's point here about how they do appropriations.

They've significantly trimme a lot of that out of the budget.

You know, in the last few years, you were able to say, I made sure that we got this bridge, that we got the sewer line done, that we got this new fire station and a lot of that's been taken away.

So you need these kind of incremental victories in order to say that they are actually accomplishing something.

I think it's going to be really interesting when we come back after spring break, when I assume focus is going.

I kno I keep talking about the budget, but like, that's the one constitutional thing that has to get done.

Do you remember how lon we waited last year for targets, that Katie was at the door and we're unbarring it?

Okay.

and now they've got targets already.

It just shows you it's a campaign year.

You know, last year they were really trying to find as much waste, fraud and abuse as they could.

And they used the clock successfully as leverage to, eliminate or to crack dow on these legislative earmarks.

This pork that Hall is really got a bugaboo about and this year they've they'v already gone through the budget.

They know that, they need their vulnerables and their people in marginal districts to be able to run on something.

And the budget not done i August just doesn't look good.

So all you guys have sat around this table for the last six months and said they're not going to get this done on time.

Look at the state of the state.

Afterwards.

We had Matt Hall on the progra and I asked him multiple times, Will you say tha the budget is going to get done?

What did you expect him to say Mrs.

Clark?

I would say that if you're working on good government and that you want to be able to tell voters like, we know what we're doing right now and we've got this handled, I would say I'm going to get the budget done by October 1st.

Well, if but if you want to play the game, you don't show your cards in the first.

Which we know that Matt Hall likes to play the game.

So end of story.

Are you with me.

Rawr.

All right.

I'm sorry, I still I still want to see if this budget gets done by July 1st.

I agree, I mean, the targets should be the easiest part.

They're just numbers.

Here's some numbers we want to hit for each budget category.

The questions are how do you get there.

They got to cut some significant things off.

Come on.

Kyle help me out.

They're going to read the Rainy Day Fund.

And do you think the House Republicans are going to raid the rainy da fund after saying they're not?

Well, they didn't.

They said they don't want to.

And there's a difference.

They want to know.

They don't want to.

You know, there's a lot of things I don't want to d but are going to happen anyway.

They will raid the rainy day fund.

They will get it done by July 1st.

It's going to be a lot.

They'll get it done before July 1st, you know, maybe 500, mayb 500 million something like that.

So I like that.

They'll balance it out and it's to everybody's advantage in that Capitol building.

They get this done by July 1st.

I would be extremely surprised if they don't.

Its going to be so fascinating to watch.

You guys want me to hang on to this tape?

Hang on to it.

You always say that.

Yeah let's see it.

Yeah.

We can't afford it okay, we need the tape.

Secretary of State races.

We haven't talked about this, s let's do the Rs first quickly.

So the Republican one we've got, Tony Forlini who's the Macomb County clerk, who is, running for secretary in the state.

Former lawmaker, former state lawmaker.

We've also got two people who are kind of running from, running in the kind of the MAGA route, if you will.

we've got, Monica Yatooma.

She's the, I think, the big name who I think has been, extremely aggressive on that front.

And Michelle?

Amanda Love.

Amanda love is the is the is the third who's also running in that vein and has been very competitive in the sense that they've had a lot of, forums and roundtables and they're going to decide who's going to be the front runner for the nomination next week and on Saturday.

So what's decides this race?

What's the issue?

The issue is, kind of the makeup of the delegates.

And is thi is the Republican makeup similar to what we saw two years ag when the Republicans delivered Matt Deperno and, Christina Cromwell, two candidates who had very, very little shot of winning in the general election.

But it really showed where the heart of the delegates were that they wanted.

As Kevin Rinke said on the show a few weeks ago, do they rather be right or happy?

Would they d they want to be right with their belief that they need electio integrity, that 2020 was fixed?

Or do they want to present somebody that the general public could see a being legitimate and electable?

Yeah, I mean, he's right.

It's about the confidence in the election system.

There's a huge group of GOP delegates that have no confidenc in our current election system.

They have sought to undermine it and spread theories about what's going on with how votes are counted.

And you have a couple of candidates in this race who are doing that and are being supported by some national voices who have been doing that.

And then you have Tony Forlini, who's part of the election system and one of the biggest counties in the state, Macomb County.

And he's running and a lot of Republicans view he's the only one of the three that give them a chance in the general election.

Even he tried to play the game.

He's been trying to play the game a little bit.

They came up with four people that had not.

Lets remember just for folks at home, like what we're talking about is the convention that is going to basically say, hey, here's who we think should be running and that these are not primary elections.

I think it's really.

The people at home don't get to play.

Right You do not get to vote on this.

These are the th the diehards who get to choose.

And on the D side.

On the D side.

It's it's a fascinating race.

It truly is.

I mean, you have Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum, who's been a long time, an election official.

She's the only one of the three Democrats running who has experience actually administering elections.

She's talking about that a lot.

However, there are a lot of concerns among Democrats about a situation involving her son and some assault allegations from when he was in middle school.

This is now becoming somethin of the forefront of this race.

And all of this stuff was dismissed.

They have no charges.

You the son was not charged.

He was suspended from school.

There was a lawsuit filed that was dismissed.

You have the lieutenant governor of the state who a lot of the union groups are getting behind.

Garlin Gilchrist to be the secretary of state.

And you have Susanna Shkreli, who was the former lottery commissioner.

We have a story this morning that Susanna Shkreli told us in an interview yesterday that Garli once told her a few months ago that he had no interest in being Secretary of State, and now he he is very likely the frontrunner in this race.

To which I say, so what?

Well, it raises a point about, you know, how hard is he willing to work on the campaign trail for this race?

It raises questions about what he'll do when he gets into office.

I mean, they're legitimate.

Is his heart in it?

Yes.

Is his heart really into this.

I mean, he really wanted to be governor is what he wanted to do.

And so he got out of the governor's race to do the secretary of state.

And so, you know, the folks a home might be like, well, why?

Like, why is everybody getting behind him?

A lot of the Democratic ticket, it has to do with balance.

The balance is such a huge issue.

Racial balance.

Racial balance in particular.

And if you're able to go ahead and nominate for Secretary of State Garlin Gilchrist, that opens up possibilities for the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Jocelyn Benson, to pick whoever she wants.

And she doesn't have to for a lieutenant governor, for lieutenant governor, she doesn't have to pick somebody who happens to be black in order to create that.

That balance on the ticket.

And it's I think this issue is really important this year, specifically because there's a likelihoo that the Republicans will have an African-American nominee for governor, and then there's a likelihood that there will be an independent candidate who was the former mayor of Detroit, who's going to be heavily contesting this race.

So, you know, the black vote in Detroit is going to be key in all of this.

If Republicans can shave off some votes because African-American voter in the city are frustrated with the Democrats are doing that, that could be crucial to the outcome.

What you're saying is a traditional Democratic bounce out of Detroit, which gives you propels into the rest of the state to counteract what happens up north.

That bounce knee may not be too high.

It's a question about wha happens in the next few months.

I mean, I can't predict righ now where it where it will end.

But this secretary of state race, if Garlin somehow doesn't win this, ther could be a lot of repercussions.

And and and it could be regardless of who wins, there could be repercussions.

All right.

Now, at this point, let's call in the Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

Mr.

Farhat, please.

Pen?

Thank you.

Oh, I thought you wanted me to throw it.

Representative Farhat, it's good to see you.

Welcome back.

How's everything down in Dearborn?

You know, it's, you know, today's actually Eid so.

Want to wish everybody a happy Eid Mubarak if they're celebrating it.

End of Ramadan.

So.

Is it, is it the Trump camp at a countr or a county today or area today that it was during the last election?

You know, when Trump came to Dearborn, he actually came to Dearborn and he he wrote a really nice letter telling all the voters there that wanted peace in the Middle East, that it's over on day one, we're gonna end this wa in Ukraine.

And the war in Gaza.

and now you're seeing more than ever.

We're we're more involved in a kind of conflict in the Middle East.

Ukraine is still a massive, the war going on there.

I think if, I don't think he'd be welcom back to the open the way he was.

And 24, I think a lot of people, have seen him kind of fall short on his promises.

And I think, it's been a shame, really, to see this presidency diminis our global standing as an ally.

Is that a sense based on your hope or realit of what you hear on the ground?

I think it's a reality.

I mean, look, at America's standing as a global power has been diminished.

Our allies aren't supporting us in the conflict.

In the Middle East, oil is up a dollar.

And nobody could explain why we're in this conflict.

Clearly, succinctly.

You ask the white House six times, I'll give you six different answers.

And I think it's a real issue right no for a lot of voters of America.

But he says he's protecting your people in Dearborn from that atomic bomb?

You know, ever since I've been alive, th Iran has been six months away.

Every sunset, every administration about six months away, six months away.

And if you believe the president in November, they took out their nuclear capabilities.

But here we are more involved than before.

Are you hearing $200 billion in and money being spent to fight this conflict on Israel's behalf?

2000 troops Marines might be sent into Iran.

Congress has not been fully briefed this morning on this conflict.

Should voters be surprised that these promises that the president made on the campaig trail have not been fulfilled?

I think they should be, yes.

Because if they're not, that means they're accepting politician that will come and lie to them.

And I don't think we ever should accept anyone that wants to be in a position of public trust to come in and to lie an to fall short on their promises.

I think people are tired of hypocrisy.

When you see us being told there's no money for, health care, for education, for good public schools, for quality roads, we see $200 billion magically appear to go fight a war that the American people didn't vote for and that Congress never authorized.

But isn't this war, though, more about helping Israel and getting back at those individuals and those terrorist who went into Israel on October 7th and raped and pillaged, hundreds of people?

I mean, isn't aren't we helping Israel get settle that score and get after a country that was harboring terrorists for years?

Look, if you want to believe the Secretary of state and what they've been sayin and even this recent resignation from the counter terrorism director of the white House, this is 100 as a result of Israel's advocacy and the advocacy of groups like APEC to bring us into a conflict in the Middle East.

The American people never voted for.

And again those acts are horrific, Kyle.

I mean, we don't want to se innocents being killed anywhere.

I mean, when you see 173 schoolgirls in Iran, killed by American Tomahawk missile, less time I checked, we're the only ones that makes those missiles.

It's a shame that we ar diminishing our global standing.

Right.

So we said when, if if today we'r deciding to go after our country because we don't agree with them, then when are we going to do North Korea?

When are we going to Sudan?

When are we going?

Where does it stop?

There seems to be no linea thinking here on this conflict.

Let me ask you this question.

You're talking about some of the things that Trump has done.

Are ther is there any blame to go around to some of those uncommitted activists, some of those Democrats who, even after Kamala Harris became the nominee, wouldn't speak out on her behalf in the community?

I mean, is there any blame there?

Here's what I'll say.

I think uncommitted movement was a very intentional tool used by activists to get the attention of the DNC, up until the last day of that convention, asking for their values to be reflected in that platform be it a, a speaker of the DNC vi a public resolution by the DNC.

And for me, I think it's a it's a huge failure on the Democratic Party to have not acknowledged that large base of activist voters who are saying, hey, can you see the humanity of the innocence, see the struggling of the people who can't afford their health care, who can't seniors on Social Security, that can't make ends meet.

Here are values in the values to me are basically focus on American priorities here.

Keep the money here and the comic be a diplomatic superpower that we know America can be right and end the violence and instead there are shooed out, there are kicked out.

They were told to to wait their turn.

And that's the consequence of politics.

You have to caught voters.

I think it's a very lazy argument.

Any politician, you know, to go out there and say, well, the voters should have voted for me.

They should have known better.

It's not the politicians should have made a better argument.

So on a 1 to 10 scale, how have Democrats done courting those voters?

I think you're seeing more of a spectrum of opinion now.

You're seeing Congressman Ro Kahanna go out there and talk about it.

You're seeing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you're seeing Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy, you're seeing more Democrat now than before, in my opinion, come out and be vocal on this conflict and to really recenter the argument on the economy in a way that they struggled i 24 and in a way that you know, think about this if you're a Democrat and I'm a Democratic voter, why you don't want to see Liz Cheney on the stage with Kamala Harris.

Liz Cheney and I agree on nothing her father dra this into account for no reason.

The Iraq conflict, which turned out to be the biggest lie sold to the American people.

This is probably the second biggest lie, this Iran war.

Right.

And so you to you don't want to see Liz Cheney on the stage with your presidential nominee.

If you're a true Democrat that wants to get out there and see the country move towards the direction that you believe in.

Representative, go ahead.

Yeah I wanted to ask you about APEC.

You had mentioned the par just for the listeners at home.

That's a huge super-pac funded by primarily Jewish groups.

How do you make the argument against APEC without it sounding anti-Semitic?

Yeah, I mean, it's the same way I make an argument to the NRA, right?

I vehemently disagree with their policy choices, and I think they prioritize the wrong things.

I think the APEC goal is to make sure there's unconditional, unwavering support for the nation of Israel.

And I think if we are an America right, we are Americans.

We ought to set our priorities as what furthers America's interests first.

And how do we continue to make sure our citizenry, when we look at let's just compare America to Israel, let's go ahead and do that.

And Israel they have universal health care, they have childcare they have great public schools.

And they have, you know, a military that we help subsidize by and large, here in America.

What do we have?

We have homeless people dying on the streets.

We have veterans that can' get the health care they need.

We have schools in Michigan that can't get kids to read proficiently.

By third grade, 70% of them can't read proficiently.

And so you wonder, where are our priorities and why are these politicians who are in seats of power not listening to the residents, and why are they beholden to special interests?

And to be clear, I said this last point.

I would make the same argument for politicians who again overlook and refuse to do things to benefit the working class at the risk of upsetting corporate lobbyists.

Right.

The same argument there applies, and it's about being consistent.

Representative, an abrupt shifting gears here, the luxury tax that Mr.

Speaker Hall says, you said, wow, this is a great idea.

You're going to vote.

I would give the speaker, well, I got to see the math, but I would give the speaker a Republican speaker of the House, Matt Hall, lots of credit for saying he wants to tax the wealthiest Michiganders, if that's truly what he wants to do, if he wants to tax, Dick and Betsy DeVos on their luxury yacht, they have.

I will help him do that.

Are you a voice of one in the caucus?

I think you'll find that a lot of voter and a lot of people in my caucus and the chamber will support shifting the burden o to the wealthiest Michiganders, if that's really what we're doing and not doing the shell game, where we're actually going to give these big guys a tax break at the cost of the working class, if he really wants to go out there and tax the wealthiest luxury goods, I think he'd find some consensus there.

Do you believe that's what he's doing?

I mean, he was having a press conference this week, and I asked him, I said, are you going to tax, deliveries?

And he's like, I don't know.

And I asked him, there's a few other things I think snow removal.

He said he didn't know car washes.

He said, I'm not going to tax car washes.

What do you think's going on here?

I mean, look, he's been a very transparent leader.

I'm sure you guys in the media released this file.

I hope you're Joe.

Are you joking?

I mean, he just won an award for transparency, supposedly.

So what I will say i that when he puts out this plan, that we can all review and that I think that's when you can make a decision or suspect that there's a hidden agenda here.

I mean, I just I just got done telling you I had the president, United States, come to my district, send us a letter, and backtrack on it.

So I'm just like, to any politician that makes a promise and I don't see it.

And the first is, if is Lansing functional right now, I think it's almos dysfunctional places in America.

Lansing, Michigan 100%.

I make no misrepresentations about that.

Rewind, a year ago.

Why?

Well, I think right now look at this.

Last week we got done.

I mean, you had an argument over a PA, right?

And only one person in the town was arguin whose PA would be, to be fair.

Public act.

Oh, yeah.

It's a public act over this interstate medical compact where you have 8000 doctors at risk, right?

You have a health care crisis.

People in Michigan know their health care costs are going sky high.

and here's something we can do to make sure that at least have access to care.

And we're running it right up until the deadline.

You know, we're getting as close to that iceberg as we can, right?

And then we pull off a deal, which I'm glad we did.

But that's not certainty for the physicians.

Physicians calling me.

So I might have to move my license to Ohio.

But representative.

Wait a minute.

Do you think the people at home who want these docs from their district give to two hoots as to when you did it.

The fact is, you got it done is what's important.

We got it done.

But the thing is, the physicians that are paying attention, they got emails from Laura saying, hey, come April 1st, you will not be able to practice in our state.

They were worried about it.

Again, I had physicians calling me saying, I' going to have to move to Ohio.

And these are high performing specialty care doctors.

We're talking at people who track illnesses at a high level, and they're saying, I'm moving to Ohio to to move their licenses.

That's ridiculous that they're even contemplating that, in this time.

Right.

So we give certainty to them, I think the people, by doing early and getting ahead of it.

And again, think about it.

If you're paying attention, you're disappointed.

That took us this long.

And if you're not paying attention, you're glad we did it.

Sure.

But representative to Zoe's point, the why is Lansing dysfunctional?

Why is it the mos dysfunctional place in America?

Yeah, I think right now there's a clear misalignment that's existing you know, in that in the House.

Right.

We're focusing on property taxes.

We'r focusing a lot of good issues.

And I give the speaker credit for trying to tackle them.

I would much rather see us do more bipartisan packages on health care, affordability and the cost of living.

Right.

We look at these PBM that have gone out of control.

This pharmacy benefit managers, they've gotten way out of control.

They've ballooned the costs o prescription drugs in our state.

We should be tackling them.

I think we should be talking about underground infrastructure.

We're not talking about that.

So, you don't think you can get a bipartisan deal on property tax relief?

I think it depends how you do it.

Them if it's going to shift the burden on the working families to give, these mega, homeowners, these McMansion homeowners a break, I'm not going to go for that.

Any deal that's going to disadvantage our working familie in our state who will not have.

So there needs to b a means test in this package to keep you happy?

There has to be a real way to pay for this package.

you know, like, we have to make sure we're not going to go into the coffers, ask working families to pay even more than they already know.

And one way or the other, whether it's increasing the sales tax without making sure we're targeting these luxury goods, we want to make sure if we're going to give relief to our working families, we're doing it in a way where it's affordable, sustainable, and that we're not picking winners.

If we're picking winners, losers, it's the working families ou of the winners in this equation.

Are you making a pitch here that you think Democrats can, you know, lead this government in a more functional way?

I mean.

Yeah.

Do you call how the session you guys lead ended?

You know, I you know, when we talk about the Democratic trifecta, we really we only lik to focus on those last 40 days.

But if you focus on the the two that the year nine months before it, it was one of the most productive in the state's history.

We we restored workers rights.

We passed through, transformative, transformative legislation around, tax policy.

The earned income tax credit repealed the pension tax.

I mean, Democrats deliver time and again when we're given the ability to govern.

And I think, you know, this time in the minority.

Sure.

We're watching, you know, a speaker here being able to keep his caucus because I get a lot of credit for doing that.

But we also are planning how okay, when we're back in power, how do we target relief?

How do we get to start in on day one?

How do we make sure that when we're in this position of trust again, we're able to execute a fair deal for the state of Michigan?

get on your kicking shoe.

Who's your candidate for governor?

My, you know, it's still a primary last time I checked, and I'm going to watch it play out.

There's one punt.

How about Secretary of state?

You know, I liked Garlin Gilchrist a lot support him for governor.

I think he'll be a good candidate.

for us in November.

I think he'll be interesting to kind of see him kick off his campaign a little bit more.

Representative did you have fun?

Oh, yeah.

Are we doing overtime?

We're not doing overtime.

You want to overtime?

Let's do some overtime Go to wkar.org and come back for more of this.

Okay?

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