We're back now with House Speaker Matt Hall with an overtime segment.

Let's pick up, from the earlier program.

I want to get at the tone of your voice when you talk to those two officials from Canada, were you on were you on the muscle or were you conciliatory?

And what was Matt Hall thinking?

Did you read them?

Right.

Act well on the bridge.

No.

No, not the bridge.

I was not yeah, I was not very conciliatory on the bridge.

Because that was a horrible deal that the people of Michigan were getting.

And, and I was really grateful to work with Howard Slotnick and Pete Hoekstra and the Trump administration, you know, and and to get a better deal.

Were you angry?

I was angry about.

Yeah, definitely angry about the bridge.

It was a bad deal.

And we were being ripped off by the Canadians.

And now we're going to have a great deal where we're going to have half of the revenues for the next 15 years.

We estimate that' going to be about $300 million, and it's going to go to the United States for, commerce.

And we're also going to get, a say in the, in the tolls.

So I think that's good.

On the on the issue of the wildfires, you know, I'm trying to persuade them to come in and testify before the committee because I think that it would be a real benefit t the people in Michigan is angry.

No, because I want them to come and testify before the committee.

And so I think that we could get a lot, you know, the tone there is basically, what is going on here?

Why are these wildfires happening?

And what is the concrete plan to fix it?

And what are you doing differently this year than last year?

Because it seems like the smoke is a lot worse this year.

And then, what are you going to do differently next year?

And then if there are no show, you'll get angry.

I think we'll get them there I, I don't know why that came.

When they come to your intake, your, your your questions.

I think the Canadian would want a good relationship with Michigan and, and, you know, and so I think that they'll want to explain to us why this is happening and what their solution is.

And I'm hopeful that we can have a partnership, to, to fix this problem.

They clearly are not able to handle it on their own.

And I think we need more collaboration.

But rather than just yell at them, I think it the first step is, hey, come and explain this to us.

What's going on and how how are you working to solve the problem?

I think that would be good.

And now I'm hopeful Congress will do the same thing.

But the difference is I can orchestrate this much faster.

I could do this next week if.

If they're willing.

Where?

With Congress, you know, everything takes weeks and weeks.

So I'd like to get some answers as soon as possible, and then you'll probably see Congress work on it, too.

Is this the oversight committee?

We'll see which committee it is.

Oversight is one that, that i very possible that it will be.

What if the Canadian officials come in and say, well, what's going on is the the globe is warming, temperatures are increasing, the forest is dry.

And that's leading to these fires.

I don't think that is a solution.

I mean, they can say that, but what is the solution to fixing?

I interviewed Bernie Sanders yesterday and he said the solution is doing something about climate change.

You must have felt pretty goo that you got to talk to Bernie.

I'm just telling you what he said.

He's a U.S.

senator.

It's a big interview.

He wants a big interview, and it's right up there with this this appearance right now.

Yeah.

No, that's big for you.

I, I that's a feather in your cap.

Congrats that you got to respond to the question.

And it's great.

You kind of force that in here to brag about it.

But it's all right.

When have you ever interviewed Bernie?

Oh, really?

Did you so forgive?

Well, let's hear it.

Let's hear it.

Well, good for you.

She didn't bring it up.

I had just mentioned it.

I had to ask her.

Okay.

Right.

All right, boys and girls.

But anyway, you know, what is the solution?

That they're proposing to fix it.

And.

And what assurances can they give us that, that there's a pla and I think it's going to take more collaboration with the United States.

And I think someone like Mike Rogers would be the type of person who could help foster that.

Do you believe in climate change?

I don't believe that, the climate change is necessarily caused by the things that they say it's caused by but you believe it's happening.

I believe that it's clear that the temperatures are hotte than they were at other times.

But there's a lot of debate about what's causing that.

Right?

And, some people think tha it's caused by, the emissions.

Other people think that it's cyclical.

Right.

But regardless, it's an issue we're, we're experiencin and we need to, but in the case of the wildfires, we need a plan.

Right?

We need a solution.

And I think it's going to take a lot more collaboration with the United States.

I guess like what I'm wondering about is I think there's a certain level of certain segment of environmentalist who may see it as disingenuous to see this concern about air quality when it comes to the wildfires at night, air quality when it comes to, you know, burning coal plants or fossil fuel, fossil fuel plants.

Now, I'm wondering if you could respond to some of those concerns about, you know, why are we so concerned about the air quality now when it's completely awful, but not necessarily the everyday levels of air quality, pollution, air pollution that we're seeing, sir?

Well, the these Canadian forest fires are because of, an inability of the Canadian government to manage it.

Right.

That's what's happenin in the case of the coal plant.

You know, Luke Merriman and myself, we wrote a letter to the Secretary of energy, right, asking him to to keep that coal plant open in West Michigan.

And when he was here recently in Lansing with me, you heard him say, if we wouldn't have kept that coal plant open, we would have had potential brownouts during those very cold weeks in the winter time.

So there's a difference between a mismanaged forest fire, and and that trade off between, needing fossil fuels and keeping our energy system running, you know, and you saw Governor Whitmer, with her recent approval of line five, right?

They gave two permits to line five, Egle and DNR recently.

And I applaud Governor Whitmer for that.

But you need you need that pipeline open to heat homes.

You need it to keep, manufacturing plants running.

I mean, that's that's why you have fossil fuels.

And if you look at, the wind and solar, it's much more expensive.

It's not reliable.

And you can't power manufacturing with it.

You can't heat your homes with it, and you can't do it affordably.

Right.

And that's one of the reasons why the energy bills keep going up there.

These Whitmer mandates, right.

The banning fossil fuels by 2040, getting rid of natural gas that's driving up the cost.

And it's leading to a lot of this really angst with, putting the windmills and the solar panels all over just shoving them down on people with the Public Service Commission.

That's why House Republicans we've introduced an energy plan that would focus on not all this political stuff, but affordability and reliability.

We need a reliable grid, and we need it affordable, which means we need fossil fuels like natural gas.

Mr.

speaker, if this is a stupid question tell me you guys have complained about the lieutenant governor being a no show.

His work.

And I heard that correctly.

Yeah.

He, he's not, he's not there.

So what is the difference between him and your members taking basically the entir month of July off to campaign?

So they could get reelected?

Is there a difference?

Oh, yeah.

Because, you know, it's interesting.

So, you know, whe I get the point in my question.

Well, so we when Joe Tate was the speaker and the Democrats controlled the House, we had the lowest number of House sergeants, I think there were 13 House sergeants.

Now we're up to 23 House sergeants.

Okay.

And when I was, you know, working on this, I say, why are these people leaving?

They said, because every day we come to work and the building's empty.

It's empty.

There was nobody there.

If you go back and look at how many days they had session under the Democrat trifecta, it was very few.

If you look at the pace that we've had.

I said to the sergeants, I said, look, one thing, you know, when I'm speaker, you're going to have a great, great quality of life at wor because we're going to be here all the time.

And we've kept that pace.

We've passed over 100 more bills in the Senate, and that helped me a lot when we were doing the negotiations on the budget, because I had 100 more bills to choose from.

I understand that but the question was, is it fair for you to complain about the lieutenant governor, who is a no show when your people are not in our tow working during the month of July so they can get reelected?

Well, you look at Gilchrist.

I mean, he showed and now the Senate has very few session days compared to the House.

I did you do the research on that?

It's a lot fewer days they've had where they are voting all the time.

And what you saw was the win there.

They're voting.

Gilchrist is not there.

So if I call, you know, if I call session I expect the people to be there.

I mean, we like I'm talking about committee hearing occurring over the summer on the Canadian wildfires.

Gilchrist is not showing up all year.

Would you call these folks back during this run up to the primary, to hold a hearing?

Yes, it would, yes, but I'm just saying Gilchrist wasn't showing up for work all year, and then he's also no there when there's no session.

Right.

But there's a huge difference that one of your your allies to Karen would say concerning how often she doesn't come.

You know, Karen, which that' not running for higher office.

She holds an office, but she's not running for higher office where Gilchrist is.

Gilchrist is saying elect me for secretary of state, and I've showed up for something like 4 or 6% of the session days.

Well, and I was there for 100% of the session is you're saying exactly the same thing back home.

Who is he?

Take a take.

A representative is running for reelection.

Would they be saying the sam thing during the month of July?

Well they showed up for hundreds of, I mean, hundreds of session days.

Garlin Gilchrist has shown up for 4% of the session days.

That's a big difference.

And we've kept the pace much more, much more aggressive than the Senate Democrats or in Gilchrist or the the House last year.

I mean, and when we did the deal on the budget, I had all these other bills they didn't have.

And so if you notice, the House, we have more public acts than the Senate.

And we passed, what was it, 66 good public acts.

And maybe it was 67, but whatever it was, you know we had a lot more to choose from because we had some we had 100 more bills passed the House speaker and Speaker, I'm curious, you know, what's realisti in terms of the coming months?

Are there any policy issues you're hoping to get through before November elections?

You know, especially, you know, this time a lot of people are fighting, back home for for their swing seats.

What what do you think, policy wise, is a realistic option for for the rest of the year?

Well, I was really disappointed we couldn't get the medical debt across the line.

You know, that was something that I've been working very hard on with, Kathy Schmaltz and, some of our other reps.

And, what we're trying to do is stop these hospitals from doin all these predatory practices.

So if you have a medical emergency, unexpected and, and you and you're in debt because of it, and then these hospitals hire debt collectors and they go ou and they foreclose on your home, and they garnish your wages, that's that's inappropriate.

So, what we want to do is prevent those practices and have reasonable practices, because a medical emergency is not a, reason for them to do this to you.

So I was hopeful we could get that across the line.

We couldn't because, Sarah Anthony wanted, like, six public acts.

I said, we're not going to give Sarah Anthony all six public acts.

We can split them up.

We can share the public acts.

So it's all about a fight of, you know, Sarah Anthony wanting all the credit.

And so it's crazy, like, we agree on the policy, but, we got to work through that.

So I think we can probabl figure that out before November.

I know, I know, you have to go, but did the governor's office ever contact you and tell you at any point were opposed to these nine bills that were left in limbo?

No, I never spoke to them about it.

But, you know, I did you send them the bills that day?

Well, and I want to be clear, I mean, the governor was very clear from the beginning that she was on the Senate Democrats side on this.

And you heard her spokesmen point that out over and over.

She was very clear.

And you ask her, I don't recall this.

She'll tell you to be clear, you maybe you were covering this up, you know, covering, you know, you run a lot of interference for the governor, Craig.

So the governor's office never had a conversation with you about these nine bills?

I just don't know.

You never know.

And remember the budget office?

Anyone, any?

No, no, no, but remember this.

The history of this, Joe Tate, the Democrat speaker refused to present these bills.

And then, I was speaker for eight days, and the Senate Democrats sued me.

And, you know, Governor Whitme was very on their side on that.

And everyone knew that.

And then, and they sued me.

And, we went through the whole court system.

I looked at it and just said I'm going to present the bills.

Now, there was no court order telling me I had to present the bills.

What would happen is the Supreme Court didn't take up the case.

Then it would we could we could motion to reconsider their opinion.

There would be further, hearings in the trial court.

And we would make our case there.

But I didn't have any court order.

I just looked at it and said, look, you know, I've been working with the Democrats.

They gave me a great decisive victory on the budget where we made the budget smaller than last year.

We cut or we, we blocke all of Whitmer's tax increases.

We stopped all of our raids on the rainy day fund.

It was a decisive victory fo the Republicans in the budget.

And I just said, you know what?

I'm going to send these bills.

There's no court order.

Here.

I'm going to send these bills.

I don't have any idea what Whitmer is going to do.

She's on their side.

But she looked at it, you know, and said, well, we just finished the budget There's no way to pay for this.

It's going to cost tens of millions of dollars to put all this mone into the state pension system.

I talked to one university that said it was going to cost them $9 million to do, the, the health care change.

I'm going to get in trouble with your staff.

Okay.

You sure?

Yeah.

Let me just cover me because they're going to be on.

Yeah, I just want to finish this.

So it was going to cost one university $9 million to do the change to the, to the health care, the 8020 where they went from the lowest that the, that the local governments, the state government and the universities could pay was, the lowest or it used to be the most they could pay on health care was 80%.

And that's the current law.

What they wanted to do was change it to where the minimum was 80%.

If you made that change, it would have been like I said, one university told me $9 million for their health care costs.

So you would have had that compounded over every local government, which did not get much of a revenue sharing increase this year.

And you would have had tha over the state government, too.

So I think the governor looked at it and just said, I've got huge liabilities that are unfunded in the state budget.

I'd have to reopen the state budget.

There's all kinds of administrative problems with the dates.

I mean, you'd have to go back in time to do all this stuff with the dates.

And then third, you you had all these new laws passed, so all these new laws passed, and what would this would erase those new laws?

Because when you have a law in the same section and you don't account for that in the, in the next law, it raises a lot.

So, I didn't know what the governor would do, but I knew either way, I presented the bills.

If she signed it, I would it would give me a lot of leverage, because we'd have to go back and fix all of that, and then I would have things I want to do, like property tax refor and the and the hospital price review board, or she would veto it.

But I look at this in every lawsuit, whether it was the work project, lawsuit where, you know, I sued every department and state government over their billions in slush funds.

And I won that, with a settlement with Whitmer or this I win on every one of these one way or the other.

It's just this one was a little more conventional, but I won.

In the end, the bills got vetoed and that was what matters.

So I'm grateful to Governor Whitmer for vetoing them, but I had no idea what she was going to do.

Mr.

speaker, thanks for showing up to have fun.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you Tim.

So maybe maybe, you know, we did this three times last year, so we're behind pace.

But it was great to be here with you in this, distinguished panel.

Thank you sir.

Thanks, guys.