Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am joined in studio by State Senator Jeff Bridges,
who is also a candidate for state treasurer. We got
about seventy eight minutes, So let's blast.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Through a couple of things.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You said that House Bill thirteen twelve a lot of
my listeners really don't like, and in particular, the thing
they don't like is is adding.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Is adding.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
To State Code preferred name, chosen name as a protected characteristic.
People see that as an infringement on the First Amendment.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You can comment on that if you would like to.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Also, you said that the bill does the job what
is the job it is.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Supposed to be doing.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
So we're talking about a community that is attacked on
a fairly regular basis in pretty dramatic and terrible ways.
And I know that you, as a good libertarian, have
the sense that people should be able to live however
they want.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Absolutely. You know Senator Paul Lundin.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Had this discussion with him as well, and I think
when he was on your show said Kelly Loving was
a hero stepping into the line of fire the way
that she did. In what we have is a bill
that was generated by that community, that came out of
the pain that they experience on a daily basis. Really
and Brianna Setone, who is a friend of mine and
(01:18):
the first trans elected official in the state.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
She's in the state House.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
You know, there are members of the Republican party in
the House who refuse to call her Madam chair when
she's sharing second reading in the House. And so these
are just the sort of the experiences that these folks
have on a daily basis. In the bill, essentially, if
you boil it down, it's stop being terrible, right. Let
people live their lives if there is something that is
(01:46):
going on in your home, right that I think that
the laws we have right now about abuse and verbal
abuse cover a lot of what it is that this
bill intended to cover. As introduced, if you have a
family life that is horrific, and this is a small
minority of folks, right, but if you have a family
(02:06):
life at home that's horrific, there should be protections for
the kid, and there are protections for the kid.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
What we have in the.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Bill is it passed, is protections at school if a
teacher is being terrible and so this is this is
really not at work right or right, and it's just essentially,
don't be terrible, But I just.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Want to do this quickly because we do have to
get to some other things.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
But at some point, did you wonder, as you're look,
I agree with you. A lot of people are terrible,
right and I fully agre I don't have any problem
with trans people live the life that you find fulfilling
and meaningful.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
And I've got no caveats.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Okay, my caveat is for the legislation, so I'll say,
but yeah, did it occur to you that this might
be a violation of people's First Amendment rights?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
And sometimes they have a right to be terrible.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
You may have a right to be terrible, but do
you have a right to be able to employees at work?
You have a right to be terrible to co workers?
Or is this the same sort of kind of verbal
abuse that we see with sexism, with racism that we
want to draw a line and say this is not
acceptable in a workplace, And.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I think it is. I think this is just just
be nice.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Just treat other people with respect.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
You respect them, they'll respect you.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
And essentially, it's it's a it's a it's a protected form.
It's protected at work in the same way that that
racist and sexist language.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Is And again I'm I'm a non religious libertarian, so
you know, calling Brionna to tone chi or Madame chair
no skin off my back.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I don't care. But some of my listeners.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Think that it's a violation of their religious beliefs to
be forced to address someone by a gender that, let
this say, a hypothetical listener thinks is not the actual gender,
and therefore they think it's unconstitutional. So you don't agree,
All right, let's let's move on just in just in
the interest of time.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
So we heard a lot about the budgetary issues.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And the kind of cuts you had to make based
on the revenue you thought you were going to be
able to spend in the past year. I don't want
to spend a lot of time on that. Right now,
what I want to ask you about and then we
can transition this easily, if you will pardon the use
of the word transition. In this conversation into the treasurer's race.
There is a fair bit of conversation that went along
(04:23):
the lines of if you thought it was tough this year,
wait till next year. Now do you think that is true?
Do you think next year will be more difficult? And
If so, what do you think will happen And do
you think that the Joint Budget Committee will be forced
to look at things like Medicaid cuts that they've been
trying to avoid.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
So what we have in the state is what's called
a structural deficit. The tabor rationing cap is inflation plus population.
And the challenge we have is the costs for the
things that the state invests in go up at a
much faster rate than inflation. So medical costs, Medicaid is
a third of our budget. Medical costs go up way
faster than inflation. Wage growth ninety percent of CA twelves
(05:00):
spending is teacher salary. Wage growth goes up much faster
than inflation. That's another third of our budget.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
K twelve.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
The cost of concrete steel, the construction materials for roads
and bridges, goes up faster than inflation. So essentially, year
over year, you have this gap between what it would
cost to keep up just to keep doing the things
that we normally do every year as a state.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
We have to cut those year over years.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
So the total dollar amount looks like it goes up,
but what we can functionally accomplish with those dollars goes down.
Because inflation just simply doesn't go up as fast as
our costs, so that structural deficit means year over year
we're going to just have to keep cutting. The services
that we're able to provide, will continue to decrease, the
roads will get worse, and yeah, certainly we're going to
have to look at ways to cut Medicaid.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
So at some point, many Blue states took advantage of
Obamacare's kind of tempting offer to go expand Medicaid, and
we did as well. Most states in America have way
too many people on Medicaid. And then I'm just going
to make an editorial statement, now we should be cutting Medicaid,
and we should be cutting some percentage of people who
are on Medicaid out of it, especially young, able bodied
(06:04):
people who can work, and especially among those the ones
who don't have who don't have kids. I would also add,
you say that the stuff goes up faster than inflation,
and certainly some of it does, because inflation is sort
of an average of things, and concrete might be on
the higher end of the average, and some like televisions
might be on the bringing the average down.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
But one thing is for sure, the things that tend
to go up fastest in price.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Are the things where the public is insulated from feeling
the cost, so you give them government health insurance right,
or or make it too easy to get a college loan.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Those are actually the two areas college.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Tuition and healthcare that have consistently gone up faster than inflation.
That's because government insulates people from feeling the cost. So
what do you think about something that you know increases
co I realized Medicaid is for low income people. But
you've got to do something about Medicaid or it's gonna
shred everything else.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
So first of all, we did reinstitute a copay requirement
for certain Medicaid coverage last year bill we passed on
the JBC. Second, most people on Medicaid are working, with
the exception potentially of some of those folks who are
spending full time caring for kids. If there was a
work requirement that was passed federally as it's currently structured,
that wouldn't have a major impact on Colorado's costs to
cover and Medicaid, because again, most of those people are working.
(07:18):
I would say if people are working and they're on Medicaid,
that's a subsidy to their employer.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
That is not a subsidy. That's a legit argument.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
But I did see Governor Polis was talking about maybe
calling a special session if the federal government did something
on Medicaid. But much of what they're talking about on
Medicaid is work requirements. So if we are already have
people working, then why would we call a special session
if it wouldn't really be a thing for us.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
We probably wouldn't if that were the only change. If
they cut eight hundred billion dollars from Medicaid, we would
feel that in the state we'd have to make some cuts.
The expansion that we did here in the state is
paid for entirely by what's called the HAS fee or
the hospital provider fee. This is, frankly like some budget
at voodoo that somehow the federal government says is legal.
(08:03):
Where we tax hospitals, the federal government matches it, and
then we give the money back to hospitals. Yeah, so
the Medicaid expansion population isn't actually costing Colorado taxpayers to cover.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Okay, last thing, We're about out of time, but.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
I want to give you a minute here. You're you're
running for state Treasurer.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Thanks for a minute.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Well, yeah, why you and why should people even care
about what the state treasurer does.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
So Colorado dollars should go towards helping Colorado's and the
State treasure has access to a lot of funds sort
of in between when taxes are collected and when they
are spent by the legislature. And in that time in between,
what you see in various different funds is investments in
Wall Street securities, whether that's Caterpillar or Chevron or something
(08:44):
of the like, or treasury bonds from the federal government,
or it's mortgage backed securities from Freddie Mack and Fannie May.
And instead of investing in Wall Street companies, and instead
of investing in housing across the US, we can take
those Colorado dollars. We can put them to work right
here in Colorado. We can build homes that are affordable
for middle income people. We can help cities and counties
(09:07):
with the infrastructure that we need to attract and keep
good paying jobs here in this state. We can use
Colorado resources to reinvest in the state of Colorado.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
But don't things have to get a return.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
So, because we're in a table refund situation. Every single
dollar we get in returns goes right out the door
as table refunds. So there's actually no incentive from a
government standpoint to get those returns.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And so if we can ensure that we don't lose.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Money, and if we have some small interest amount on
this that we get to make sure that we cover
any losses that occur, we can invest in the State
of Colorado in a way that has no impact on
the budget. No, it doesn't decrease our ability to fund
the programs we care about it.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Anyway, it sounds like your answer would change if you
felt somewhat certain that we wouldn't be in a table
refund situation.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
If we eliminate the Tabor cap. It looks a little different.
But again, there are different pots of money.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I don't mean eliminate the taborcap, dude, I just mean like,
maybe the revenue will come in a.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Little lower and there won't be money to give back
if we have a major reception. That looks very different.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
This is true, and I think that's part of why
you've seen the current treasurer with a much more conservative
investment profile. But as we look forward, if we expect
that we are going to stay in this table refund situation,
and even if we don't, Colorado dollars should be helping
Colorado's whether it's housing, whether that's starting and building a company,
whether it's infrastructure to ensure that folks have what they need. Like,
there is some really interesting work we can do in
(10:30):
the Treasure's office that directly affects the people of Colorado.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And we'll get you back to talk about that more.
State Senator Jeff Bridges joins me in studio. He's very interesting, dude.
I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for being here,
Thanks for joining me here, Thanks for having me
I am joined in studio by State Senator Jeff Bridges,
who is also a candidate for state treasurer. We got
about seventy eight minutes, So let's blast.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Through a couple of things.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You said that House Bill thirteen twelve a lot of
my listeners really don't like, and in particular, the thing
they don't like is is adding.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Is adding.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
To State Code preferred name, chosen name as a protected characteristic.
People see that as an infringement on the First Amendment.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You can comment on that if you would like to.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Also, you said that the bill does the job what
is the job it is.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Supposed to be doing.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
So we're talking about a community that is attacked on
a fairly regular basis in pretty dramatic and terrible ways.
And I know that you, as a good libertarian, have
the sense that people should be able to live however
they want.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Absolutely. You know Senator Paul Lundin.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Had this discussion with him as well, and I think
when he was on your show said Kelly Loving was
a hero stepping into the line of fire the way
that she did. In what we have is a bill
that was generated by that community, that came out of
the pain that they experience on a daily basis. Really
and Brianna Setone, who is a friend of mine and
(01:18):
the first trans elected official in the state.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
She's in the state House.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
You know, there are members of the Republican party in
the House who refuse to call her Madam chair when
she's sharing second reading in the House. And so these
are just the sort of the experiences that these folks
have on a daily basis. In the bill, essentially, if
you boil it down, it's stop being terrible, right. Let
people live their lives if there is something that is
(01:46):
going on in your home, right that I think that
the laws we have right now about abuse and verbal
abuse cover a lot of what it is that this
bill intended to cover. As introduced, if you have a
family life that is horrific, and this is a small
minority of folks, right, but if you have a family
(02:06):
life at home that's horrific, there should be protections for
the kid, and there are protections for the kid.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
What we have in the.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Bill is it passed, is protections at school if a
teacher is being terrible and so this is this is
really not at work right or right, and it's just essentially,
don't be terrible, But I just.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Want to do this quickly because we do have to
get to some other things.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
But at some point, did you wonder, as you're look,
I agree with you. A lot of people are terrible,
right and I fully agre I don't have any problem
with trans people live the life that you find fulfilling
and meaningful.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
And I've got no caveats.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Okay, my caveat is for the legislation, so I'll say,
but yeah, did it occur to you that this might
be a violation of people's First Amendment rights?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
And sometimes they have a right to be terrible.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
You may have a right to be terrible, but do
you have a right to be able to employees at work?
You have a right to be terrible to co workers?
Or is this the same sort of kind of verbal
abuse that we see with sexism, with racism that we
want to draw a line and say this is not
acceptable in a workplace, And.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I think it is. I think this is just just
be nice.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Just treat other people with respect.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
You respect them, they'll respect you.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
And essentially, it's it's a it's a it's a protected form.
It's protected at work in the same way that that
racist and sexist language.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Is And again I'm I'm a non religious libertarian, so
you know, calling Brionna to tone chi or Madame chair
no skin off my back.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I don't care. But some of my listeners.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Think that it's a violation of their religious beliefs to
be forced to address someone by a gender that, let
this say, a hypothetical listener thinks is not the actual gender,
and therefore they think it's unconstitutional. So you don't agree,
All right, let's let's move on just in just in
the interest of time.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
So we heard a lot about the budgetary issues.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And the kind of cuts you had to make based
on the revenue you thought you were going to be
able to spend in the past year. I don't want
to spend a lot of time on that. Right now,
what I want to ask you about and then we
can transition this easily, if you will pardon the use
of the word transition. In this conversation into the treasurer's race.
There is a fair bit of conversation that went along
(04:23):
the lines of if you thought it was tough this year,
wait till next year. Now do you think that is true?
Do you think next year will be more difficult? And
If so, what do you think will happen And do
you think that the Joint Budget Committee will be forced
to look at things like Medicaid cuts that they've been
trying to avoid.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
So what we have in the state is what's called
a structural deficit. The tabor rationing cap is inflation plus population.
And the challenge we have is the costs for the
things that the state invests in go up at a
much faster rate than inflation. So medical costs, Medicaid is
a third of our budget. Medical costs go up way
faster than inflation. Wage growth ninety percent of CA twelves
(05:00):
spending is teacher salary. Wage growth goes up much faster
than inflation. That's another third of our budget.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
K twelve.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
The cost of concrete steel, the construction materials for roads
and bridges, goes up faster than inflation. So essentially, year
over year, you have this gap between what it would
cost to keep up just to keep doing the things
that we normally do every year as a state.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
We have to cut those year over years.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
So the total dollar amount looks like it goes up,
but what we can functionally accomplish with those dollars goes down.
Because inflation just simply doesn't go up as fast as
our costs, so that structural deficit means year over year
we're going to just have to keep cutting. The services
that we're able to provide, will continue to decrease, the
roads will get worse, and yeah, certainly we're going to
have to look at ways to cut Medicaid.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
So at some point, many Blue states took advantage of
Obamacare's kind of tempting offer to go expand Medicaid, and
we did as well. Most states in America have way
too many people on Medicaid. And then I'm just going
to make an editorial statement, now we should be cutting Medicaid,
and we should be cutting some percentage of people who
are on Medicaid out of it, especially young, able bodied
(06:04):
people who can work, and especially among those the ones
who don't have who don't have kids. I would also add,
you say that the stuff goes up faster than inflation,
and certainly some of it does, because inflation is sort
of an average of things, and concrete might be on
the higher end of the average, and some like televisions
might be on the bringing the average down.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
But one thing is for sure, the things that tend
to go up fastest in price.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Are the things where the public is insulated from feeling
the cost, so you give them government health insurance right,
or or make it too easy to get a college loan.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Those are actually the two areas college.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Tuition and healthcare that have consistently gone up faster than inflation.
That's because government insulates people from feeling the cost. So
what do you think about something that you know increases
co I realized Medicaid is for low income people. But
you've got to do something about Medicaid or it's gonna
shred everything else.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
So first of all, we did reinstitute a copay requirement
for certain Medicaid coverage last year bill we passed on
the JBC. Second, most people on Medicaid are working, with
the exception potentially of some of those folks who are
spending full time caring for kids. If there was a
work requirement that was passed federally as it's currently structured,
that wouldn't have a major impact on Colorado's costs to
cover and Medicaid, because again, most of those people are working.
(07:18):
I would say if people are working and they're on Medicaid,
that's a subsidy to their employer.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
That is not a subsidy. That's a legit argument.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
But I did see Governor Polis was talking about maybe
calling a special session if the federal government did something
on Medicaid. But much of what they're talking about on
Medicaid is work requirements. So if we are already have
people working, then why would we call a special session
if it wouldn't really be a thing for us.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
We probably wouldn't if that were the only change. If
they cut eight hundred billion dollars from Medicaid, we would
feel that in the state we'd have to make some cuts.
The expansion that we did here in the state is
paid for entirely by what's called the HAS fee or
the hospital provider fee. This is, frankly like some budget
at voodoo that somehow the federal government says is legal.
(08:03):
Where we tax hospitals, the federal government matches it, and
then we give the money back to hospitals. Yeah, so
the Medicaid expansion population isn't actually costing Colorado taxpayers to cover.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Okay, last thing, We're about out of time, but.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
I want to give you a minute here. You're you're
running for state Treasurer.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Thanks for a minute.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Well, yeah, why you and why should people even care
about what the state treasurer does.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
So Colorado dollars should go towards helping Colorado's and the
State treasure has access to a lot of funds sort
of in between when taxes are collected and when they
are spent by the legislature. And in that time in between,
what you see in various different funds is investments in
Wall Street securities, whether that's Caterpillar or Chevron or something
(08:44):
of the like, or treasury bonds from the federal government,
or it's mortgage backed securities from Freddie Mack and Fannie May.
And instead of investing in Wall Street companies, and instead
of investing in housing across the US, we can take
those Colorado dollars. We can put them to work right
here in Colorado. We can build homes that are affordable
for middle income people. We can help cities and counties
(09:07):
with the infrastructure that we need to attract and keep
good paying jobs here in this state. We can use
Colorado resources to reinvest in the state of Colorado.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
But don't things have to get a return.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
So, because we're in a table refund situation. Every single
dollar we get in returns goes right out the door
as table refunds. So there's actually no incentive from a
government standpoint to get those returns.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And so if we can ensure that we don't lose.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Money, and if we have some small interest amount on
this that we get to make sure that we cover
any losses that occur, we can invest in the State
of Colorado in a way that has no impact on
the budget. No, it doesn't decrease our ability to fund
the programs we care about it.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Anyway, it sounds like your answer would change if you
felt somewhat certain that we wouldn't be in a table
refund situation.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
If we eliminate the Tabor cap. It looks a little different.
But again, there are different pots of money.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I don't mean eliminate the taborcap, dude, I just mean like,
maybe the revenue will come in a.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Little lower and there won't be money to give back
if we have a major reception. That looks very different.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
This is true, and I think that's part of why
you've seen the current treasurer with a much more conservative
investment profile. But as we look forward, if we expect
that we are going to stay in this table refund situation,
and even if we don't, Colorado dollars should be helping
Colorado's whether it's housing, whether that's starting and building a company,
whether it's infrastructure to ensure that folks have what they need. Like,
there is some really interesting work we can do in
(10:30):
the Treasure's office that directly affects the people of Colorado.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And we'll get you back to talk about that more.
State Senator Jeff Bridges joins me in studio. He's very interesting, dude.
I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for being here,
Thanks for joining me here, Thanks for having me
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