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Can a few hundred words by fewer than 140 Arkansans have much impact on 200,000 Russian soldiers 5600 miles away or have any influence on the one man who ordered those soldiers to conquer a neighbor.

It's the moral imperative behind those words that gives them weight beyond their number.

So say their authors, whose resolution condemning Moscow's invasion of Ukraine was approved this week by the Arkansas General Assembly.

There was other legislative business, of course, and we'll cover that.

But we'll begin with the official Arkansas response to the conflict in Eastern Europe.

Early in the week, Governor Hutchinson ordered state agencies to determine whether they had any contractual relationships with the Russian government or Russian companies with an eye to suspending them.

And the urged Arkansas businesses to do the same We need to be clear in our condemnation of Russia and the actions that they have taken, and we must impose the most severe sanctions that's available to us and understand that this is not a short term concern, but this is a long term concern with the actions that Russia has taken under the leadership of Mr. Putin.

Now, in the hours immediately after they were followed in the legislative branch, a series of proposals denouncing Moscow and its leader and urging public and private support for Ukraine.

The principal author of the resolution finally adopted as Senator Jim Hendren, of Gravatt, who joins us now.

Also on board, representatives Aaron Pilkington of Knoxville and Andrew Collins of Little Rock.

Gentlemen, all three of you, thanks very much for coming aboard.

Senator, we'll begin with you.

Obviously, a state the size of Arkansas cannot have that significant economic impact on the affairs in Eastern Europe.

Or can it?

Or is this basically a, as I mentioned earlier, a moral gesture on the state's part Well, I'd call it a little bit more than a moral gesture.

And one of the things I said in the well that is important about a resolution like this is you've got people literally fighting and dying for freedom.

And then there's a lot of misinformation out there.

And if there's one thing that the people who are going to fight and die for freedom deserve, it is the truth to be told by leaders.

And we've got Fox News and others saying that there's no reason to be upset with Putin, that he's a smart guy.

And the fact is, he's a war criminal.

He's been a war criminal in the past.

He is today.

And he will continue to be.

So it's really more to make sure that the people of Arkansas heard clearly from their leaders what the truth was.

The folks who are fighting in Ukraine deserve that.

And I was proud that the legislature stepped up and clearly defined this was Vladimir Putin's war and he is an evil war criminal.

Thought for a moment, gentlemen, if we could, about the economics of the situation.

Obviously, the Hutchins administration wants sanctions, such sanctions as can be imposed by Arkansas agriculture, Arkansas manufacturing without doing, one supposes, undue damage here at home.

Mr. Pilkington.

Well, I think I think it's the right move, putting the internal pressure on Vladimir Putin is is important is the best way to get him to the table, to have peace talks and to end this war in Ukraine.

You know, luckily for us, there are other markets for us to sell our goods.

There's a whole lot of world that we can.

And and I think while there may be a little disruption to our economy, we've got a really strong economy here in Arkansas.

We've got a low unemployment rate and we've got a good workforce.

So I think we'll be fine if we issue sanctions on Russia.

How much disruption do you say?

Some.

I'm going back now to the Russian wheat embargo of a half century ago.

There was significant disruption across the country.

To particularly the grain farmers anyway.

Sure.

You know, I would say that with what little trade that we do with Russia compared to the EU, compared to China, those markets are still open to us.

And I would not be shocked to see if countries especially like the People's Republic of China doesn't use this as an opportunity to buy excess of our agricultural products.

Which, you know, we're willing to sell them.

Yeah, it's it's comparatively small, though, is it not, Mr. Collins?

It is.

I think we have 8 million in imports and 64 million in exports.

So relatively speaking, it's not a huge market for us.

I think we can and should do all we can as a state to make sure that we are not supporting or not giving relief to the regime as they attempt the invasion.

But ultimately, I don't think there's going to be a lot of pain here or impact felt at the consumer level.

Certainly, as far as the the private businesses that do business over there, many are voluntarily stopping their business over there.

So I think that's a positive thing that we should support.

Well, of course, what Arkansas consumers like consumers across the country are concerned about and particularly well globally, and that's fuel prices, gasoline and diesel.

Yeah.

Already gas prices are significantly higher than they were at the beginning of the Biden administration.

What we want to see, though, and what I think most Americans want to see is us increased drilling, not only here at home, but in other Western states, the North Sea in the United Kingdom.

And of course, to I think as we push to use more natural gas, more nuclear as well, I hope that we are able to divert some of our energy.

Pain's that way.

It will hurt at the pump for sure.

But I think this shows that we cannot be reliant on one authoritarian nation to receive such a massive chunk of our fuel.

And thank goodness we're not as bad as a country like Germany, which is will be significantly hurt by these by this war with the at the pump.

So I think this is a good wake up call, especially when we're dealing with other authoritarian regimes across the world, like Venezuela, things like that, where we also get a significant amount of oil from that.

We need to be energy independent as soon as possible and that we need to increase our extraction of fuel.

Well, you say a big chunk of it.

It's somewhere between like five and 11% on an annualized basis that we get from Russia.

So I think that's a big percent.

But maybe maybe I'm wrong there.

But I think I think I think that's a significant I mean, that moves the needle.

So let's call it oh, I think energy independence is absolutely important and it's something that should be our goal.

We're still exporting oil.

Well, at the same time, we do import the 10% we do it's it's a floating market.

And I think even more so in Europe, you know, they do have their reliance on oil and particularly gas.

Whatever we do, it's going to be more powerful if we have Europe standing with us as we do it.

But as the representative says, I agree.

We need to make sure that we are developing our energy sources, including renewable ones, and the solar that we have here in Arkansas as one of our great resources so we can be energy independent for the next time it comes up.

As far as now, we need to impose whatever sanctions we can credibly stand behind and and that will have an impact.

But remembering that other countries, especially in Europe, are more dependent.

We are about to enter that season where farmers are really going out into those fields and using hundreds of millions, I guess statewide of gallons of diesel Any way to gauge the impact on them and in the near, let's say, the balance of the year?

This thing's not going to end tomorrow, correct?

There's a they are going to see a little bit of pain at the pump.

Like I said, I think if we even release barrels from our strategic reserve, things like that, I think we can we can help relieve some of that pain that they see.

And I think, though, it's important because as soon as we say that we can't do any sort of actions against Russia because of our fear that we may have to pay a little bit more back here at home, then it emboldens them to continue.

Because in my opinion, this doesn't end just with the Ukraine.

It continues and continues.

So well, we'll also have an impact.

Are we not likely to see an impact in terms of supply chain?

It's going to cost more to move goods say, from, oh, wherever in the United States or abroad to the shop or at a local grocery in Arkansas or the auto parts store?

Absolutely.

I think this is when we talk about standing with the Ukrainian people and standing against the aggression, there are consequences that we may feel cost costs.

Yeah.

And this is this is what it means.

It's not just words.

It's actually standing up and occasionally taking some of the the brunt of some of the difficulties that ultimately are going to be helpful.

And what we're trying to do strategically from Knoxville, from Little Rock, what are you are you hearing from your constituents about the situation in Ukraine and how firmly we should stand it?

Is American policy right now justified?

So what I would say is, from what I'm hearing back in my district, is they're horrified for what they see in the Ukraine they're praying for the Ukrainian people.

They want us to do everything we can.

Of course, they're they're not interested in getting involved in a in a European war and seeing American boots on the ground.

Listen, my my is currently deployed overseas in the Middle East.

I mean, the thought of him having to go and fight the Russian army in Ukraine is horrifying to me.

So if we can do these things like pay a little bit more of the pump so my brother doesn't have to go risk his life in the Ukraine, I'm going to make that call.

Yeah, let's go.

Yeah, I think it's pretty extraordinary how United people are that I've talked to about it.

It's just such a brazen act of aggression against a free nation.

And we haven't seen anything like it as far as mobilization in Europe since World War Two.

So the people I've talked to are uniformly ready to stand with the Ukrainians, impose tough sanctions and and try to deter and punish this kind of aggression, not only here, but in the future.

Yeah, but as Mr. Pilch noted indicated, all they're saying they think about American forces, ground forces, or in direct support of Ukraine.

Yeah.

I don't think there's an appetite for that.

And I think part of the reason is Ukraine is as we all know, not part of NATO's.

And that security alliance has to mean something, especially in this context.

So I don't think that there's an appetite for doing that.

But there's a lot we can do and are doing already having some impact with the sanctions that have been in place, put in place by the Biden administration.

We had a Ukrainian delegation in Arkansas just a couple of weeks ago.

President, I think from Mr. Hutchinson's State of the State message, been any further contact with those individuals?

Mr. PILKINGTON.

Mr. Collins.

One of the lobbyists who deals with that group, Randy Thurman, he had messaged us and told us he had been in contact and that the resolutions that we filed, they were following too closely and that it really meant a lot to them to see us stand up for Ukraine.

And so but besides that, that's the only sort of contact I've had with them.

Yeah.

Andrew.

Well, we also have some Ukrainian nationals who live here in Arkansas.

And we had a day of prayer and we had one of the people who lives here in Arkansas speak and pray with the leaders at the state.

So in addition to those people who came in to the legislature, we want to make sure that we express our solidarity with those Ukrainians living here in Arkansas.

I want to move on, if we can, on some other legislative issues.

The primary responsibility of a fiscal session is to write a budget which the General Assembly is quickly moving toward a conclusion anyway on that issue.

Senator Hendren, let me go to you, because I know you expressed some serious reservations over the past decade about the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a.

Obamacare, and its impact on the state.

But I know this past week had cleared the Senate with not a single dissenting vote, the Medicaid budget, state human services budget, times change or what Well, they do.

And I'm glad to see that because it was really kind of a ludicrous position for the last eight or ten years that we would threaten to hold up the entire Medicaid budget, which would have been absolutely a train wreck for our state because we were unhappy about something that happened six or eight or ten years ago.

And I'm glad to see that we finally moved on past that and found some other areas to make our points about.

And I also think the fact that we're in the middle of it still in the middle of a pandemic, although I hope that we're seeing the end of that.

But nevertheless, the strain that our hospitals have been under our rural hospitals, we'd have had not had those hospitals do this pandemic.

It would have been devastating for so many people in our state.

And the fact is, had we not found a way to work the Arkansas works to the private option or our home or whatever you want to call it, basically the Medicaid expansion, it would have been much, much more difficult for our citizens to do this pandemic.

So I think folks would realize that and have and it is kind of I doubt that you'll see that conflict arise in future debate.

You want to say, what about the House?

And a gentleman that he what's the sentiment in the House?

I think you'll see some symbolic no vote, but I mean, it's going to pass.

I think we're ready to make this something that we move on past and accept going forward.

Well, except as Mr. Collins put it, and I think it was the gentleman from grab it, Senator Hendren, who told me a couple three years ago in a conversation, Senator, whether you liked the Affordable Care Act or not, it is now ingrained.

It is a part of the fabric of government and public policy in Arkansas.

Would you concur with it?

I think it's an important part of policy in Arkansas and something that is essential for our budget and our hospitals.

So we don't have to close rural hospitals like we've seen in other states that didn't accept it.

I think it's a good thing for our state.

Yeah.

Mr. Pilkington.

I'd say so additionally to you know, we're just playing the hand that's Delta.

And that's what I remind a lot of people on the right and fellow conservatives is this isn't policy that we get to dictate completely by ourselves.

I mean, we're having to deal with federal law.

So it's here to stay.

There was a bit of pushback on one of the administration's initiatives, and that was about 500 additional beds up at Calico Rock.

Won't be on line for obviously for some time of year.

18 months at a at a minimum, but a four.

Well, double digit in that well somewhere between 60 and $100 million was the administration's estimate.

There was some pushback on that.

There has to be a better way.

Mr. Collins, some of your colleagues are hit.

Yeah, I think there was a split in our caucus about that.

I understand the need.

We do have a genuine overcrowding problem in our prisons, in our jails, but it doesn't really get at the underlying issue, which is that we've got too many people being incarcerated going in and out of jail because of recidivism rates that are too high.

We need to make meaningful reforms that will actually keep us safer and prevent us from spending so much money year after year on incarceration.

So I think that the issue was that it was more of a short term stopgap fix rather than getting at the real underlying issues that are causing so much incarceration in Arkansas specifically.

Yeah.

Mr. Pilkington.

You know, I agree with Governor Hutchinson when he made the comments that, you know, we're growing states and this is infrastructure that needs to be built for growing state.

You know, unfortunately, we do have overcrowding in prisons and we need to to address that.

I think what we're kind of forgetting is you know, we've been working the last few sessions on doing more criminal justice reform.

There's been some great legislation by both Democrats and Republicans to improve that problem.

We've done more bills to kind of expand behavioral health in Arkansas as well.

So I think we know that it's going to be a shotgun approach to fixing this issue.

This is just one of the things, though, that we need to do.

And so I really appreciate Governor Asa Hutchinson's leadership on this.

But are we doing enough, as Mr. Collins suggests or notes, that are Arkansas's incarceration rate of inmates per 100,000 is you know, I want to say it's off the charts, but it's among the highest in the U.S.. Are we making any headway at all?

We don't seem to be making that much headway into alleviating that that aspect of the problem.

Well, I would say I, I believe we are I think this is a good first step.

I think, like I said, as we fought to build out crisis stabilization use for mental health, I think that was a good step.

I think as we have like I said, we've expanded things in health care because a lot of this stuff comes back to health care with mental health.

And so as we've worked on that the last few sessions, I think we will start seeing some headway.

You know, unfortunately, we both know this when we're having tough economic times.

We also see a rise in crime as well.

We're seeing as well.

We have a we have a drug problem in the state that we're working on as well.

You know, and thank goodness that we're doing what we can and we should be doing more to help our police because there are many times having to deal with these issues.

And so I think we're making progress.

It's small, but I think we're doing better than than we would be if we were doing nothing.

Let me put it that way.

Yeah.

Senator Hendren, I think correct me if I'm wrong, the last time I checked, I think corrections and community corrections pardons and paroles, we're approaching $700 million annually are enough.

That sounds about right, Steve.

And it is getting to be more and more expensive and, you know, the easy thing to do is build prisons.

And I supported the additional $100 million because as you heard, we cannot have unsafe conditions in the prison.

We cannot have overcrowding But the hard part of the job is to figure out, do we have the right people there?

And I think that when we look closely at that, we're going to find a lot of the problem is self-inflicted because we're putting the wrong people in the prisons and taking minor criminals or nonviolent drug offenders and turning them into professional criminals, which is exacerbating the problem rather than fixing the problem.

One of the things I've seen over the last 12 years in the Senate is we spent a lot of time.

We created several task forces when real problems arose, like school insurance, teachers' insurance, when it was out of control.

We put together a task force, tax reform, health care, fixing the Medicaid expansion program to where they could pass.

We have to do the same thing in a serious manner on prisons we have to find out how we address the root cause of the problem to make sure that we're not making the problem worse and that we're not filling the prisons with people who shouldn't really be there but shouldn't be in some sort of alternative program, but give them help rather than teach them to be a professional criminal.

So I hope that the legislature will look at something like that and do the hard work again in the short term, you have to have adequate space, but in the long term, we have to figure out how do we address the real problem of making sure that we're helping people who can be helped rather than just filling more prison cells?

Well, Senator, you just provided a segue there, and that's public employees and teachers, health insurance, health, life coverage.

Legislature address that.

I think the bills are on their way to Mr. Hutchinson's desk, and he may have signed him now.

Was this a is this short term or how far did we go in this session to providing some stability in that system?

Well, I guess, Steve, I'm starting to feel old because this is one of those things that I saw ten years ago, the exact same problem and the first solution was we're going to start with $32 million at and fix the problem so we don't have the rate increase.

And many of us in the legislature at the time said before we throw a bunch of cash at it, let's look at structural changes so that we don't just find ourselves here again four, six, eight years later and we did it again.

That was the first task force that I chaired and it was how do we fix the escalating and out-of-control teachers insurance costs?

And now again, it's also for state employees.

And we implemented a package of legislation eight or ten years ago that that really fixed the problem for a long time.

But unfortunately, over the last six or eight years, we've removed and undone much of those reforms because some of them are hard hard things.

And the fact is, over the years, we've gotten back to where we were and and we've had to come back to do it again.

And and I'll predict in ten years we'll have to do it again.

It's just the nature of the way government tends to always grow until you get to a point where it's unsustainable.

So the legislature did the right thing.

We can't have insurance unaffordable for state employees and our teachers, certainly.

But we also have a responsibility to go and figure out why is it that it's escalating so much faster than the private sector insurance.

When we did that ten years ago, we found there were some very sound reasons and some bad things that we needed to fix.

And I expect you'll see that again if we look at it seriously.

Well, judging from experience, are based on your experience do you have any thoughts on why it's accelerating so rapidly?

Well, I can tell you what we learned in the past was the state and the schools have to be careful about using insurance as a hook to hire because it rapidly you don't realize the cost that incurs because it's not just the employees who are bearing that cost, but it's also the contribution of the taxpayers.

So we we did find many things, many benefits, for instance, part time employees being covered in in school settings that have never been covered in private employment settings.

And that was very, very expensive treatments being covered.

You know, we've had wellness checks.

And one of the things that we've done away with that was because there was an expense.

But the studies then told us that those wellness checks paid for themselves and did early detection of disease and prevention of very more expensive claims.

So again, this is a complex problem that is not going to solve itself with a couple bills that lobbyists bring to legislators that require serious work.

And again, that's why many times I found that the best setting to do that was when a group of legislators who would focus on that, who were somewhat unencumbered but come together and look at it in detail, but it's going to be required because the problems are there that we had ten years ago, and they will continue to cause more problems in the future.

Unfortunately, it is a moving target.

In fact, this is not gentlemen.

It is.

And, you know, one of the things that I think is we also need to, as the legislature, be constantly monitoring this.

I mean, Senator Hinshaw made a good point.

You know, we were here ten years ago.

He predicts will be here there in another ten years.

And, you know, there's a lot of things that we're just I feel like we're leaving on the table.

You know, we're not a part of a clinically and a great network for these state employees.

We're not being really aggressive with coordinate care models or things like that.

And so to me, you know, I think we've got to get really aggressive about being proactive and trying to find ways to help bring quality care to these beneficiaries, but also to do what we can to minimize costs.

And, you know, we have pharmaceutical costs are going up rapidly.

I expect they're going to go up even more with the way things are going right now.

And so, you know, but really, when you look at most health insurance plans, you've got 20 to 10% are driving probably 80 to 90% of your costs.

And so we've got to get really aggressive about putting the resources we need to to make sure that those patients are getting seniors so they're not driving up costs And so but we as a legislator really need to be monitoring that content and make sure that they are doing those things and know what they need to do because private insurance is able to do this way better than we're able to do it.

And so you kind of ask yourselves, why are we failing when the when the market is succeeding?

Well, in civilian life, let me put it that way.

You are in the health industry, so I give us your thinking on.

But in pharmaceutical prices, that has been an issue for well, I'm old, too.

Well, you know, like I said, I think, you know, anything we can do to, you know, the new models are law with coordinated care getting into clinical and grade network, things like that.

And so while some people may push back because they're afraid that by putting them in a in what some would say a restricted network lowers the chances in reality know what it is?

It's about standardizing care and when you standardize care, what we've seen across the board is that we're able to have lower cost effective federal action on pharmaceutical prices indicated here possibly you know my eyebrows went up to what possibly how but what what would you advocate or are you advocating it?

I would say I want a little more time before I gave you a more detailed detailed answer on how I think the federal government needs to regulate pharmaceutical costs.

Mr. Collins, I'll give you the last word.

Yeah.

I just want to point out, you know, we are talking about insurance for a lot of people here.

And if we were talking about immediately cutting that reducing or significantly changing the benefits that they were promised, I think that's a different conversation.

That's not what we're doing with these reforms.

These reforms are structural.

They are designed to give more buying power to the state and to the Medicare Advantage plan that we'll be stepping in to replace the existing plan and to increase the state contribution, which was significantly lower in mandated at a cap level by legislation than other states.

So what we're doing here is not cuts to the system.

It's reforming the system to make it something that has more buying power and and more solvency.

Concerned about utilization caps No, I'm talking about the cap on.

I'm sorry.

No, but as an issue, as a separate issue, but related.

Are you concerned about overutilization?

Well, of course, I mean, overutilization is significant part of any increase in costs.

So, you know, yes.

But I think there are reforms that we can put into place that can do that in a way that doesn't hurt the people who are on the plan.

And we can do that in a gradual way with their input.

And that was one of the key parts of this reform was getting input from people in the system into future reforms rather than just handing it down from the legislature.

Yeah.

About 30 seconds remaining.

Mr. Pilkington.

If you want it, no person cause is correct.

I mean, these are structural changes we're making a lot.

What I was talking about is things we need to be doing in the future because we can't just say, We did this, bam, we're done.

And I'm really appreciative of the bipartisan support we were able to do to get these changes made because they were necessary.

And and I think that's something all Arkansans can be happy about that we were able to to fix this without it being a mudslinging fight.

Mr. Pilkington.

Mr. Collins.

Senator, thanks very much for being with us.

Thanks to all of you and come back soon.

See you next week.

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