♪♪ This is year six of republican control of the Iowa House, Senate and Governor's Office.

At the end of this week, three GOP-sponsored tax plans have been introduced.

What are the priorities of Senate republicans?

We sit down with Iowa Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver on this edition of Iowa Press.

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♪♪ For decades Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond.

Celebrating 50 years of broadcast excellence on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, January 28th edition of Iowa Press.

Here is Kay Henderson.

♪♪ Henderson: On January 11th, republican Governor Kim Reynolds unveiled her tax plan.

This past Thursday, republicans in the Iowa House unveiled theirs.

The day before on Wednesday, Senate republicans unveiled their tax plan.

And our guest today can speak specifically to that.

Our guest is Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver, a republican from Ankeny.

Thanks for joining the conversation.

Whitver: Thank you for having me.

Henderson: Also here at the Iowa Press table, Dave Price of WHO-TV and Stephen Gruber-Miller of The Des Moines Register.

Gruber-Miller: Senator, House republicans' plan is the same as the Governor's in terms of a 4% individual income tax rate.

The Senate plan is more aggressive, it goes down to 3.6%.

Why did you feel like that was the right approach to take?

Whitver: Well, first of all, we really appreciate the Governor leading with a bold and ambitious agenda this year, including the tax bill that she rolled out week one.

We have been working on taxes really for six years, but ever since last year we spent the whole interim working on tax policy as well.

Incidentally, a lot of the things that we have been working on matched up with what the Governor rolled out, the flat tax, the retirement and stuff, some corporate reforms.

And our plan all along was to go five years.

So the big difference is not necessarily the rate, it's just we go another year.

Hers is a four year plan, we went five years and just went a little deeper on the rate cut.

Price: Speaker Grassley talked about, since a lot of people are talking about a lot of things here, you've got personal taxes, you've got corporate.

He's saying maybe the corporate part could be a separate piece, maybe do that down the road.

For you all does it have to be all one big thing?

Whitver: I think it make sense to keep it all together.

It's tax policy, that is how we have worked on our tax bills over the last five years is generally one big tax bill.

And there are three different buckets in the Governor's bill.

It's the flat rate, it's the retirement piece and the corporate piece.

The House did not include the corporate piece in theirs, but we did.

Our plan is a little different than the Governor's.

But we really think it is important to have a conversation about that corporate rate here in Iowa.

And the bill that we rolled out isn't so much a reduction for corporations, it's more reforms, because we have a system in place in Iowa here that over 20 years we had the highest rate in the country.

And so people would come and complain about the high rate and they'd say, oh we'll just have a little carve out for you, a carve out for you.

And we want to make that rate lower.

But we really need to have a conversation in Iowa, do we want to have a high rate and a bunch of tax credits and special interest carve outs?

Or do we just want to lower the rate for everybody?

And I think it's really important that in Iowa your corporate tax rate isn't determined by how many lobbyists you have at the Capitol getting you special interest carve outs.

Henderson: So is that a red line?

Will you not pass a bill unless that's in it?

Whitver: Well, I mean, we want to have the conversation about corporate.

The Governor rolled out some ideas and so did we.

And so we want to have that conversation about the corporate rate and really just the corporate tax policy in Iowa.

Henderson: Also included in all three plans would be the elimination of state tax on retirement income and a new proposal that would give a tax break to retired farmers.

It's sort of complicated.

But number one, how do you tell if a farmer is retired?

And I'm hearing that there is some concern that this might spike up land prices because speculators would come in, buy land, and then would say hey I'm retired.

Whitver: Yeah, I'm glad that the Governor included some retirement income tax elimination or reduction in there because we've been working on a similar concept.

And really what she rolled out was different than what we were working on.

But after looking at all the proposals and trying to expedite the legislative process we said, we're going to take what she put in her bill and put it in the Senate bill and we kind of abandoned what we were working on.

But that will be part of the conversation.

Whenever a bill is rolled out initially that is the process, as you guys know, is to get feedback from different groups and try to perfect that.

And so we're open to those conversations, I'm sure she is as well.

And so that will be a big part of that retirement piece conversation is, is there anything we're missing and anything we need to fix there?

Gruber-Miller: You also have something in the Senate plan that is not in either the House or the Governor's plan and that is an idea to use a sales tax sort of shift here, you would eliminate a 1% local option sales tax, but then make it statewide and also use that money to fill an outdoor recreation and water quality trust fund.

Why is that important to be included in the Senate?

Whitver: Well, this is really probably a 15 plus year conversation in Iowa.

So, the voters put in the Constitution that the next time the state sales tax is increased three-eighths of that one penny increase will go to the Natural Resource Trust Fund.

That was put into place years ago before I was even in the legislature.

Over the last 10 or 15 years we've never increased the sales tax and we don't want to do that.

We're not here as republicans to increase the sales tax.

A couple of years ago the Governor continued the conversation by rolling out the Invest in Iowa plan, which ironically it was in the year that COVID hit and it kind of derailed that.

What we know is Iowans voted the IWILL concept into the Constitution.

Polling has shown it's pretty popular.

And so we wanted to find a conservative solution to enact that trust fund.

And to us the conservative solution is to take the local option, local sales tax that is already in place, take it statewide.

That will trigger the IWILL and then we can constitutionally protect that money.

This is very similar to a concept that happened before I was in the legislature.

You guys might remember when they took the state's local schools tax and made it statewide and now it's SAVE.

It's the same concept, it is more of a mechanism to trigger the funding mechanism for IWILL to ensure that we have those water quality, quality of life issues.

Gruber-Miller: Won't it be a tax increase for some jurisdictions including I think Ankeny that don't have local option?

Whitver: Well, most of the jurisdictions in the state have already enacted this.

There are some that haven't.

But when these local option taxes are enacted it is usually sold as a property tax decrease.

We'll raise the sales tax and lower property taxes.

There's a few that have never done that.

But the bill will require that to be used on property taxes.

So if there is a sales tax change that is going to be used to reduce property tax at the local level.

Henderson: One more difference among the plans is the Governor holds onto the money that is in the taxpayer relief fund.

By this summer it is estimated there will be $2 billion in that.

You use all of that over the period of five years to "finance" your tax cuts.

The House uses half of it and keeps the other half in reserve just for a rainy day.

Which one of those ideas do you predict will become reality?

Whitver: It's early to say on that.

They are three different concepts.

But the reality is there's $2 billion sitting, there's going to be $2 billion sitting in the taxpayer trust fund and we do need to figure out what to do with it.

You just can't let that grow forever.

That is part of the reason we wanted to be a little bit more aggressive on getting the rate a little bit lower and actually use that $2 billion, get it back in our economy a little bit sooner and lower the rates.

Price: But that does up the risk here potentially, right?

She talked about you keep that in there just in case something goes funky here with the economy, you always know you have that.

If you use it, you don't, right?

Whitver: Yeah, and that is part of the conversation we'll have.

Whenever we're doing tax plans like this whether back in 2018 or last year we always look at multiyears and we project how much spending we're going to have, we project how much revenue we're going to have, we take into account big expenses that we see coming down the road.

We see a Medicaid bill coming in a couple of years when the Feds stop giving extra money through the pandemic, that is all accounted for.

And so we'll have that conversation about the trust fund.

Price: What do you say about the fairness of it for those who say the higher up you are here you're going to get, whether this ends at 3.6% or 4% or whatever you all settle on here, they're going to get the larger cuts here and then secondarily will there be anybody in this plan who will end up paying more in taxes than they do today?

Whitver: No, from current law to where we're going there's not going to be increase on anybody.

What I would say to that point, your original point is in Iowa our tax code is very punitive, not only because we have a really high rate, but because also our top rate starts at $77,000.

So that is what we consider the richest tax bracket in the state of Iowa.

Other states, California we talk about their high tax rate of 13% or whatever, that usually starts at like $500,000.

In Iowa, we consider the richest tax bracket $77,000.

And so generally a working family or a dual income household, everybody is going to see a tax cut period, but a significant amount of people in Iowa are above that $77,000 highest tax bracket.

Henderson: One of the things the Governor said in her Condition of the State speech on January 11th was that we're going to have less money to spend, and that's just fine.

So what gets cut?

Whitver: We're not cutting anything.

We've been very judicious in our budgeting the last few years.

We've increased in areas that we feel that are priorities and we need to increase.

But we haven't been frivolous with our spending and that is why we have been able to create a structural surplus.

From the amount we bring in to what we spend there is almost a billion dollars now and that is part of the way that we can finance these cuts.

But we have continued to invest in areas like mental health or public safety or education, whatever it is we have continued to invest in those areas and we will continue to do that.

As we look at a five year plan we have projections of how much will be spent in those five years to account for that.

Henderson: Well, legislators are doing more than cutting taxes.

They are debating other issues.

So real quickly let's move on.

Vaccines, the Supreme Court has ruled on the federal vaccine mandates.

Is that sufficient?

Or do you think the legislature needs to pass another bill?

Whitver: Well, the question is what can the legislature do at the state level?

These are federal laws and the pre-emption clause will override a lot of what we do.

So we passed our bill during the special session to try to address some of that, to make sure some of those exemptions are in place.

But a lot of what we said is the Supreme Court is going to have to decide a lot of this and they have for the most part and have thrown out some of those mandates.

The big one that is still there is the CMS mandate -- Henderson: For health care workers.

Whitver: I'm sorry, for health care workers in health care facilities.

The big thing we're trying to do now is talk to our federal officials.

When they come and talk to our caucus it's really an issue that needs to be solved at the federal level rather than at the state level.

Price: There were a couple of incidents over the last couple of weeks that people have talked about.

One of them was from your colleague, the Senate President Jake Chapman, who talked about in his opening remarks about a sinister agenda that some in schools have essentially corrupting children's minds.

This past week you had Bobby Kaufmann, a state representative from Wilton, who concluded his speech at the Statehouse by extending both middle fingers as he's talking about leaving his message for critics.

Big picture here, that kind of language, that kind of action, those kind of things, is that an effective way to connect with people?

Is that a good way to get a message out?

Whitver: That is not how I try to communicate messages.

What I think is the most effective way is to come up with ideas and make your case to the people of Iowa.

That is what I've always tried to do and that is what I'll continue to do.

Gruber-Miller: On the topic of books, the Governor has a proposal to do what she says would increase transparency in sort of school curriculum and library books.

She has that proposal.

Senator Chapman, who was just mentioned and one of your other Senate colleagues, has talked about going further and possibly criminally penalizing teachers who are providing books that are deemed to be obscene.

Do you agree with that approach from your colleagues?

Whitver: I'll speak for myself.

My kids have been in public schools here in Iowa for six years both at Dallas Center-Grimes and Ankeny.

We've had nothing but a great experience with our teachers, with our administrators and overall a good experience.

We do hear concerns from a lot of parents and really it started about the same time as the pandemic when schools were being shut down and then as we came out of the pandemic, as schools were starting to open up we started to hear concerns from our local schools.

And at first it was, my school is not even open, my kids can't go to school, they've having to learn online and it's not working.

So we tried to address those types of issues.

And we did, we were the first state in the country, one of the only states in the country that said, no matter where your kids live, no matter what school they go to in Iowa, they can go to school every single day, which sounds crazy that just a year ago we even had to have that conversation.

But we were one of the first states to pass that bill.

And then it went into curriculum and now it's into books and libraries.

And so we're hearing concerns from parents and our job is to listen to those concerns and try to address them.

I think adding transparency is a really good way to do that, make sure our parents have a seat at the table in their kids' education, give them a process to address any concerns they have.

And then it comes down to school board elections as well.

And as you know, here in the Metro at least, a lot of schools had turnover in their school board because the parents didn't like what was going on.

And then ultimately, if none of that works you need to give parents a choice on where their kids are going to school and whether that is going from one public school to another public school like we did last year or a public school to a charter school or maybe now public to private schools.

That is I think the best path forward for Iowa.

Gruber-Miller: So really quickly, this is something that people have heard and has caused some concern.

Is the idea of criminal penalties for teachers off the table?

Whitver: Yeah, I think charging anyone with felonies for these types of things I don't think is a good idea.

We haven't seen the bill come out of the Senate.

I'm not sure if the House has a bill yet.

There's a lot of ideas on the table.

And so we're going to look at those ideas like we do everything.

Gruber-Miller: Okay.

You mentioned private schools.

The Governor has got a proposal, it's different than the one she had last year, that would give some parents money to send their students to private schools.

We haven't seen that filed in the Senate yet.

Is that something you intend to pass as the Governor proposed it or do you think it needs some work?

Whitver: Yeah, I support what the Governor is bringing forward on education issues.

We supported a lot of that last year and in the Senate we largely, if not passed everything that she sent to us last year regarding choice including some of those failing schools to private school choices.

I don't think I've seen the bill yet, but I agree with the concept and we will get to work on that as soon as the bill is filed.

Henderson: One of the concepts seems to address concerns that were raised by rural legislators last year and reserves part of the money into a fund to distribute to rural schools.

Obviously this bill stalled in the House, it didn't stall in the Senate.

But do you think that allays the concerns that you heard from other republicans?

Whitver: I think that is a better question for the House because that's where they were struggling on getting the votes.

And so from our standpoint we really want to have this conversation about putting parents back in control of their kids' education and this bill will just be part of that.

Henderson: So, do you want to have a conversation about biofuels?

There is a bill in the House that is largely the Governor's proposal which seeks to increase the availability of E-15, the fuel that has a 15% ethanol blend.

Is the Governor's proposal a slam dunk or is this thing going to stall again?

Whitver: Well, I think a lot of work was put in over the interim to try to get the bill to a point where almost everyone is in agreement.

I think it was just filed or maybe will be filed Monday in the Senate.

And so the House is moving a little bit faster on that.

But from what I can tell so far all the groups that are watching, all the constituencies that are watching that bill, they are a lot closer together.

I'm not sure everyone is in agreement yet, but hopefully we can get to that point where everybody is in agreement.

Henderson: How do you get past the idea that it's a mandate?

Whitver: Well, right now it's an issue where we want to make E-15 more accessible and we've done a really good job in Iowa of doing that and largely it's already happening.

If you go to any new gas station that is being built they're really offering E-15.

And if you look at the sales of E-15 in Iowa, it is going up very quickly and we're improving that.

And so whatever the policy is, the end goal is to get more E-15 into vehicles in Iowa.

And so we're going to look through all that policy.

But I feel good about getting something done in that regard.

Gruber-Miller: Yeah, we had a show here last week about the issue of child care affordability and access.

The House has several proposals that largely are focused on sort of deregulating child care and I don't think we've seen any bills from the Senate yet.

What is the Senate going to be doing on this issue?

Whitver: Yeah, I think some of the ideas that you see in the House are going to be filed in the Senate as well.

Honestly we put a lot of the time the first couple of weeks into that tax bill and that is why we rolled it out months earlier than we normally would.

But a lot of these same ideas that you see starting in the House will be filed in the Senate and some of these child care issues as well.

And we think that is important to -- we passed some child care, a child care bill last year, but we think that there is more to do and some of it is matching Iowa up with the federal requirements as far as ratios of kids to supervisors.

We have more strict than almost any state around us.

If we just match it up with the federal government it helps both the affordability and the accessibility and the workforce shortage that is happening at these child care centers.

Gruber-Miller: Yeah, so part of the issue with child care is the workforce and keeping workers.

And providers have told us that there are issues with low pay and so you're not retaining workers.

Is there anything that the Senate can do to address that side of things?

Whitver: I think part of it is a free market solution if we can get government out of the way.

And so part of that is in Iowa you have a ratio of supervisors to kids and most states around us let's just hypothetically say a room of 18 kids would need 2 supervisors in Nebraska.

Well, they need 3 supervisors in Iowa.

And so if you have 3 people instead of 2, you're going to have to, you can't pay those 3 people as much as you can pay 2 people.

And so solutions like that are what we want to be talking about.

Price: More broadly about the workforce, I was looking through the numbers and if you go back pre-pandemic Iowa was usually second or third, maybe fourth in the country and the lowest unemployment rate.

If you look at December's numbers we've now slipped down to 20th.

So there is something different going on with our recovery.

What is stopping people, in your mind, from getting back into the workforce here?

And is there something dealing with unemployment that you see going through this session?

Whitver: Well, I think that is a difficult question.

Our unemployment I think, I was looking at some of these last night, I thought we'd talk about this and I think our unemployment is still really, really low, 3.7%.

Nebraska is at 1.7% unemployment.

Price: But nobody wants to move to Nebraska.

Whitver: So it's not that we're slipping down to 6% or 8% unemployment.

We're about where we've been, it's other states have caught up.

And so some of that is demographics.

We just have an older population in some areas and those people are retiring, the economy is doing well and they can retire or with the pandemic setting in they retire a little bit earlier.

But if I had the magic bullet it would be easy to fix and it's not and so we're going to continue to look at all options to try to get people that aren't in the workforce of working age that are able-bodied, we need to try to get them in the workforce.

Price: But the Governor wants to lower the number of weeks you can receive unemployment, lower that income threshold where if you're offered a job you have to take it.

Is there something more than that that you'd like to see get through the legislature?

Whitver: We've been working on public assistance reforms for many years and I think probably three straight sessions we've passed something in the regards of welfare reforms and we want to continue to do that.

The Governor right now in Iowa, you qualify for unemployment for six months, she wants to reduce that to four because studies do show that it's at the last couple of weeks of that time period whatever it is that more people go back to work.

And so we want to try to expedite that.

But I do support those ideas she is bringing forward.

But we want to continue to look at some of the welfare reforms as well.

Henderson: One of the discussions is about the number of vehicles that a family that qualifies for food assistance has.

If you're a two parent family, shouldn't have you have two cars so you can both go to a job?

Whitver: Yeah, that's part of the total asset verification, which is in law and what are your assets worth and those are things that we want to look at and we're open to if people think that is too egregious we're open to changes.

But the reality is there's people that have a huge net worth but little income and are on our public assistance program.

Henderson: What's the percentage?

Whitver: I don't know the percentage off the top of my head.

But there are people that have a big net worth, their income is low, and so they qualify for some of these programs and we're trying to figure out -- the big thing on these programs is there are certainly people, a percentage of people in Iowa that absolutely need these programs.

But is it 10% or 15% or is it 35% like it is in some cases?

And so really you want the resources that are available, and it's a finite amount of resources, to go to those that truly need it and make sure that they are getting the services they need.

Henderson: This past week I covered three different meetings at which members of law enforcement said, the state's texting while driving law is just unenforceable and we need to have a law like is enforced in 25 other states that says you cannot pick this thing up while you're driving.

Is that going to pass this year?

Whitver: Yeah, it seems like that issue is getting more momentum.

I don't know if it's to the point where it will pass yet.

But that issue is getting more momentum.

I think we passed the most recent change maybe three or four years ago.

And so there's more momentum.

I can't predict at this point if it will pass or not.

Henderson: Also this past week we learned that Iowa has a professional soccer team?

Who knew?

And there is a soccer arena, stadium, being built in downtown Des Moines.

The Iowa Cubs ownership has changed and there is a requirement by Major League Baseball to upgrade that facility.

There's been controversy in some other cities around the country when government has supported those sorts of projects.

What is your view, what is the role of government in supporting these kinds of entertainment venues?

Whitver: Well, one thing we hear from a lot of people, especially in this post-pandemic economy where it's a fierce competition for workers and for citizens in an era that now you can work remotely where maybe you couldn't before.

People are moving, they are voting with their feet and moving.

Illinois lost 140,000 people last year that had an option to leave and they did.

And so one thing we hear is quality of life.

One thing that I try to stay away from is we're going to pick this project or that project.

We try to set up any of these quality of life programs to where there is money proposed and people bring their ideas and an unelected board sits and tries to make those decisions and tries to take the politics out of it.

If we sit there as a legislature and try to pick and choose which friends we want to support I don't think that is the best way.

And so that is how we've tried to do it.

Price: I'm going to mix sports and politics as we get close to the end here.

As a player and as a broadcaster I've never heard you talk about being scared of an opponent, yet you have your critics who say you are chicken and that is why you are moving to a new Senate district.

So, Mr.

Competitor, how do you answer that?

Whitver: After 10 years of being in the house that we've been in, with the new maps it causes everyone to look at where they want to be going forward.

And so we made the decision as a family that a lot of the district I'm going to be representing hopefully in the next election or I'll be running for at least is a district I've represented before, some of it I represent currently.

And so it's just trying to figure out where we want to be long-term.

And so we're in the process of looking for a little bit more land and moving our family into that district.

Price: So are you scared of your opponent?

Is that why you're moving?

Whitver: Probably in the same school district.

Look, I was in the ballot in 2018, which as we all know was the worst year ever for republicans.

I don't believe this year will be anything like 2018.

I think it's going to be a really good republican year and I think it gives us a chance as a Senate caucus if we play our cards right to continue to pick up seats.

We're already at 32 out of 50 seats, which is about the highest it has been in recent memory.

And we're going on the offense.

We're going to go pick up more seats and that is part of the plan.

Henderson: Senator, we have no more cards to play here because we are out of time.

Thank you for joining us again here on Iowa Press.

Whitver: Thank you.

Henderson: You can watch Iowa Press anytime at iowapbs.org or at our regular broadcast times, Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at noon.

For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching.

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The Associated General Contractors of Iowa, the public's partner in building Iowa's highway, bridge and municipal utility infrastructure.

Fuel Iowa is a voice and a resource for Iowa's fuel industry.

Our members offer a diverse range of products including fuel, grocery and convenience items.

They help keep Iowans on the move in rural and urban communities.

Together we Fuel Iowa.

Small businesses are the backbone of Iowa's communities and they are backed by Iowa banks.

With advice, loans and financial services, banks across Iowa are committed to showing small businesses the way to a stronger tomorrow.

Learn more at IowaBankers.com.