- We are still paying the same contractors that we're blaming and suing.

You cannot contract out the responsibility of a state.

- If it gets done early, the contractor's going to get a nice bonus.

If it gets done late, they're going to get a big penalty.

So, there's big incentive to get this done.

These two common sense reforms are long overdue and the reason they're not passing is because the orange man bad according to Democrats.

If Trump wants it, it's going to be bad.

- The SAVE Act is not a reform.

The government have the resources to verify citizenship and we have been doing that for decades.

(bright exciting music) - And welcome to this episode of "Lively."

I'm Jim Hummel.

We're joined this week by attorney and former Chief of Staff for Governor Almond, Joe Larisa, and Weayonnoh Nelson-Davies from the Economic Progress Institute.

How secure are elections here and across the country?

It all depends on who you ask.

President Trump last week used a primetime address to cast doubt on election integrity while Secretary of State Gregg Amore said elections have never been safer here in Rhode Island.

Joe, let's begin with you and your friend President Trump.

He's been bringing up the 2020 election again and looking back and looking forward.

What did you make of that address?

- Well, I thought the address was fine, but the breaking news on the SAVE Act is it looks like it's going to pas in part as a rider on the reconciliation bill.

So it looks like we're going to have proof of citizenship and voter ID, but only for states that want to take the extra money because of reconciliation.

So, Trump's going to get half a loaf, but the red states will adopt it and the blue states won't.

- Do you think they're going to be able to get it, though, through the Senate?

I know it's reconciliation, but doesn't it still have to get through the Senate?

- It does have to get through the Senate, but the big sticking point among the three or four Republicans was they don't want to federalize elections, even though this only applies for two federal elections.

They want to keep it with the states.

But the way this operates, they're going to be able to do that.

They're not going to mandate that any state have these requirements.

So I think we're going to get the at least 50/50 vote.

- I think it's still going to have to pass a hurdle in the Senate because the SAVE Act, everyone should definitely care about integrity of the election process, but voters' rights and state constitutional rights are also at play here.

And I'm also hearing that if it doesn't pass through reconciliation, the Congressional Republicans are hoping to tie this to a government shutdown.

So, that's concerning, right?

For you to tie elections to the funding of the government.

And the issue with the SAVE Act is, one, it's talking about proof of citizenship.

We already do proof of citizenship for people to vote in elections in the United States.

The problem is, is now, instead of the burden being on the government to prove this, it's now being on targeted elected eligible voters, women, naturalized citizens who may have a different name on their birth certificate and license, people in rural communities who may not have access to documentation when the government can do that already.

And so now in tying that and insisting it happen before this election is a concern for the public and the public is putting pressure on Congress not to pass this.

- Isn't it a double-edged sword, though?

Because the people in red states who might not be able to, I mean, we've talked about women, the maiden name, married name, producing your birth certificate.

That's not just a blue state thing.

That might be a barrier for people in red states, potentially Republican voters, to vote.

- This is not a Democrat or Republican issue.

Both of these requirements are overwhelmingly popular in the 80s percent with the public.

You need to be an American citizen to vote in federal elections.

So, you need to provide proof of citizenship and everyone knows that the polls, if you don't have voter ID, you can sign anybody's name.

And New Jersey pointed out that this is an issue.

Ken Block's report pointed out that it probably doesn't affect the actual election results, but it's not perfect.

It's just securing our elections and it's overwhelmingly popular and it's long overdue.

And it is going to pass the Senate because- - But there's a difference between voter ID and then all of us who are now registered and ready to have to present birth certificates, right?

- Yeah.

- I agree.

And I think again, to the point, you have to prove that you're a citizen to vote in elections now.

This is not a widespread issue despite the unsubstantiated claims that it is.

Jersey is one situation and Jersey has nothing to do with the proof of citizen issue.

It's not going to deal with software errors anyway.

So, the SAVE Act is not dealing with the software error that happened in Jersey.

What it is doing, and evidence show that, it is not going to deter non-citizens from voting.

It is going to deter eligible voters from voting.

And that is the concern.

And that is not popular with residents.

- New Jersey did feed into the narrative, though, didn't it?

I mean, the timing couldn't have been worse.

And for those who don't know, 6,000, it was a registry thing.

It's kind of the motor voter law, that when you register it automatically, or when you get your license, it goes over to the registry in New Jersey.

6,000 people who were not citizens were signed up and 400 actually voted.

So, it's not going to swing an election, but it's not a good look.

- No, elections mean nothing if you're having illegal aliens voting in the elections and all this act does is try to secure that.

And birth certificates are required to register to vote and then voter ID when you do vote.

It's a common sense reform and it's just been stymied.

The other- - But, Joe, if it's such a great piece of legislation, why do they have to go through the gymnastics of a reconciliation?

- Because the Democrats are trying to kill it.

You know why?

They like illegal citizens voting because they vote 90% or more for Democrats, Jim, that's why.

- Right, you just said that it's not widespread.

- [Joe] There's no evidence of that at all.

- You just said that it's not widespread.

- It is not widespread.

- We don't know how, no, I didn't say it's not widespread.

I said it probably doesn't affect the outcome of elections because it's too small a percentage.

Trump is trying to find out how widespread it is and he's been stymied at each and every turn, but we're getting there.

We're doing it.

- I think what is important here, the public confidence in our elections is critical to our democracy.

When unsubstantiated claims were made in 2020, it led to an attack on the Capitol on January 6th.

So, I think election officials have to be very careful about saying our elections do not work and our election process do not work without evidence.

The Secretary of State, our elections are not perfect, yes, but we have to show evidence that it's widespread.

We have to talk about errors and that's what audits are for.

The Rhode Island Secretary of State, as soon as he learned that we used the same vendor in Jersey, have reassured the public that that has not happened yet in Rhode Island and he's going to do a vote audit and we've been doing audits since 2019.

So we have to be very careful in elections about making sure public confidence continue, doing what we must do, but we cannot infringe about the rights of voters under the motive that we're trying to protect integrity.

- I agree, election integrity is paramount, and that's what this is all about.

There should be no issue that you need a birth certificate to register and there should be no issue that you need to show a driver's license or other ID.

And if you don't have a license, there are all kind of protections where you can get ID to be able to vote.

We want everybody who is eligible to vote to be able to vote and we want nobody who is not eligible to vote to be able to vote.

- And that's what this is all about.

- But you have the president of the United States in a primetime address who gets upset because some networks didn't carry it.

Now, he's threatening broadcast licenses.

The only election, what a shock, that he was worried about was the one that he lost.

Apparently, there was no problems with the '16 or the '24 election.

And if the Republicans win in the midterms, you're not going to hear anything about that.

And the other thing I don't get, Joe, is you have, the Republicans have all branches of Congress.

The Republicans, the House, Senate, and Presidency.

So, where is the, Trump lost, but the Congress does well?

That's got to be some type of rigging to go on.

- Well, all branches of Congress, we can't do anything in the Senate because of the filibuster other than reconciliation.

But you're right on Trump going a bit too far in this thing as Trump can do.

But he's right that we want election integrity and these two common sense reforms are long overdue.

And the reason they're not passing is because the orange man bad according to Democrats.

If Trump wants it, it's going to be bad.

And that's just wrong in this case.

- But I would say, some of the Republicans are a little hesitant, too.

- Well, the only reason they're hesitant, some is four, is because they don't want to federalize and take over the state election process.

- What a shock!

What does the Constitution say about elections, right?

- And it's not reform.

I think, again, we have to emphasize our elections require only citizens to vote right now.

The SAVE Act is not a reform.

The government have the resources to verify citizenship and we have been doing that for decades.

The SAVE Act is not about election integrity because that's already happening.

It is infringing upon the rights of voters and there is nothing in that that proves that it's going to deal with errors like software errors, which is the situation we're dealing with right now.

And that is on top of what the Supreme Court just did with the Voting Rights Act.

So, now you have people now being forced to go in person to prove identity when you can mail in registration and do online.

It's a deterrent to actual eligible voters voting and that is a concern.

- Jim, just remember, the Democrats tried to take over all elections just a few years ago.

Nancy Pelosi said we were going to undo the filibuster to get the Democrat version of the SAVE Act, which was the opposite.

Unlimited mail ballot voting, no proof of citizenship, no voter ID, mandatory for overstate.

- During COVID, you're talking about?

- During COVID.

That was the closest we ever came to undoing the filibuster was that Democrat version, the opposite of the Republican version.

So, they did want to take over elections.

- I'll give you the final word.

- Proof of citizenship have always been required in the United States.

Only citizens can vote and there is no evidence that there's a widespread issue.

And I want to encourage voters, despite what you hear, to please vote, Rhode Island voters.

The primaries are September 9th.

Go and vote.

- There you go.

- We agree with that.

- All right, that's one thing we can agree on.

Lost in the rush of the General Assembly's final days last month, lawmakers ordered an audit of the embattled Department of Transportation.

Something that a lot of us wish happened decades ago.

Weayonnoh, I don't know how many times we've spoken about the Washington Bridge on this show.

That was maybe your first show we talked about it.

This is long overdue.

I wonder what we want to get out of this.

- Yeah, and this is not an engineering issue, right?

It's an accountability issue.

And I think the lack of accountability is what really pushed the General Assembly to demand an audit.

We're hoping this audit can show us what happened, whether these were warning signs that this was going to happen, and really looking at the Rhode Island Department of Transportation structure.

Are we contracting everything out to contractors or do we have internal expertise?

And the main part of the audit, I'm hoping, is to show how can we prevent this from happening before and insert real reform going forward.

- Yeah, we agree on this one.

This is very much long overdue and it's not like we're out there all alone on an island.

There are 50 other, 49 other states.

They have DOTs.

We should be using best practices.

Shout out to Senator Zurier who discovered and reported we have the worst roads at the highest price.

Why is that?

Let's dig into this.

General Assembly's doing some good stuff and this is one of them.

- The three things that I thought that caught my eye among the things they want to do, cost per lane mile in the district.

That's interesting.

Vehicle and equipment availability.

And downtime and overtime utilization and patterns.

Sounds like basic management stuff, right?

- It does, and I think that's what's really concerning.

First of all, it is clear that we were not blindsided by this issue.

It was foreseeable.

Even if you don't have all of the expertise in-house, you have to have at least one or two people that understand how to read inspection reports and can actually go out there.

You cannot contract out the responsibility of a state, and that is the excuse that's been given from DOT and that's unacceptable.

- What about that?

I know they do that in some other states, but we've talked, as the lawsuit has gone, it's almost like Peter Alviti, the former director, said, "Well, it's all on the consultants," and nobody in-house reading the reports.

- I agree with that.

And other states do that, and that's what I want to see the audit uncover.

How do they do it?

Because I agree.

Okay, contract it out.

But you need one or two people in-house who's as smart or smarter than the people they contract it out to, who's beholden only to the state and paid by the state directly as an employee to oversee that.

And there is no oversight.

It's the prisoners or whatever it is.

The prisoners guarding the inmates that, whatever that- - Yeah, yeah.

The asylum.

- Asylum.

Yeah.

- And then what's interesting, which I'm not sure how this is happening, we are still paying the same contractors that we're blaming and suing.

So I want to know, is there someone internal right now while we're figuring this out that is overseeing these contractors that we're still paying, even though we're in court, blaming them for this situation?

- We talked to you early on when the state went forward and I was always curious, you know, are we going to get enough money?

I'd rather have a little accountability.

You said we can do both.

And that case is really, we haven't heard much about it.

One of the defendants I think got dismissed or whatever.

But is it just the kind of the machinations of a lawsuit that it's just going on out of the public eye right now?

- Yes, there's just stuff going on behind the scenes that's not really important.

We already got the report leaked.

The expert report, which was the big thing.

And now it's just discovery and lawsuits take time.

Years.

They all do.

- Yeah, I think the good thing is construction have started.

So I hope it doesn't take 5, 10 years to finally fix the bridge.

And again, I'm hoping the audit can tell us what are the reforms that we have to implement in Rhode Island following best practices because we hope this does not happen again.

- You know, it was it was interesting to me, this is a major company that they hired.

They've done major projects.

You know, it's not Schmo Engineering from wherever locally.

I though that the governor would've made more of a big deal out of, they've started pouring the concrete.

We have been hammering him for so long, that to say, "Hey, look, something's actually going in the ground and we're on time and on schedule and hopefully on budget."

- Yeah, again, in the news, Jim, as you know, as well as I do, bad news always gets the headline.

Good news, eh, we're not going to talk about it.

But this is on time, on budget.

And they did another good thing.

If it gets done early, the contractor's going to get a nice bonus.

If it gets done late, they're going to get a big penalty.

So there's big incentive to get this done.

What is it?

November 2028 or something?

It's going to get done.

- I'm probably the only one, and people think I'm insane when I say this, but I said right along, it seems so far off.

I think they're going to come in early.

And I think they're going to cash in on that bonus.

Now, it's not going to be a year early, but it could be March, April, May, June.

And wouldn't that be nice, you know, under-promise and over-deliver?

- It will be nice and it will tell us that we could have done this before too if we really pay attention.

So, hopefully going forward, we will.

- Okay, so looking at the audit for the DOT, the other thing that got passed late in the session, I think we haven't had you on, Inspector General, been talking about it for years and then all of a sudden the new speaker pulls the rabbit out of his hat and not only favors it, but funds it, and now a position is in the pipeline.

- I think it's great.

And it's been a Republican priority for years.

And he comes in and says this is a good government priority.

And he's right.

Massachusetts has one.

It saved a lot of money.

Other states have had one.

We model it off of.

It's saved a lot of money.

And Rhode Island needed an Inspector General, and we have one and they did it the right way.

There were complaints that it didn't cover the judiciary or the legislature, but that's a function of separation of powers.

It can't.

The legislature could not cover itself with this Inspector General.

- You were right in the middle of separation of powers years ago when you worked for Governor Almond.

I'm wondering, is there any way around that to be able to get a, because I understand it's 99% of the spending comes out of the executive.

But I think, just from a perceptive standpoint, people are like, "Well, where's the accountability for the legislature?"

And some people say the Auditor General, but he answers to the legislature.

Is there any way to get around that?

- Well, the Joint Commission on Legislative Services, the press checks them out.

And when they're spending, they have a huge budget, you see it in the paper.

It's $36 billion out of billions for the legislative spending.

It's just not a lot.

But perception-wise, you've got three branches of government.

They want all three covered.

Why is only one covered?

But the reality is it's literally 99.6% of the spending is covered.

And the governor doesn't have to choose, people don't know this, because separation of powers dictates that this is the governor's choice.

So, this is really an advisory committee and a great bunch of people who are giving them names.

- Attorney General, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Jason Gramitt from the Ethics Commission, and the guy who's like the President of the Inspector Generals is, I didn't know there was one, right?

Association.

- Yeah, I think we're on theme with all the things we talk about, about building public trust, and an Inspector General is going to build public trust.

You know, Speaker taking that out at the last minute, came out swinging, I think really set the tone for people having confidence in government again.

So I'm definitely in favor of that.

I do want to caution us, like, it's one person.

So, it's not going to be a miracle.

They're not going to discover all of the things we have.

We may have to put resources to meet what we're saying we're going to do.

So, that person's going to need a team.

I'm hoping this is also really, again, about integrity.

This person, whoever's hired, it's not about headlines.

You know, talking about the Washington Bridge headline is great, but I'm hoping this is someone who can prevent headlines from happening.

Make sure we are identifying problems and helping government solve it and being transparent and accountable to the people.

- And probably a lawyer, right?

Don't you think you need a lawyer?

- We'll see who it is, but the original proposal- - I mean, it's because they have subpoena power.

- Yeah, they do have subpoena power.

- So you've got to kind of know the legal machinations of that, right?

- Yeah, I'm sure with this esteemed crew, they're going to pick somebody who's tremendous.

I just hope the applications are there for it.

The budget is only $1.2 million.

The initial bill was $20 million.

So, they cut it way back.

But I'm confident that, and the Auditor General can hire whoever he wants within that $1.2.

But if he's got a big issue or he's finding something with spending, or somewhere, I'm sure he can go to the General Assembly and do a supplemental- - The one thing I've never understood, particularly on the Democrat side is, you know, we've talked, and we'll talk in a moment about this with the end of the state budget.

In a place where the Democrats think it's a revenue problem and not a spending problem, wouldn't you want somebody to find maybe some waste and fraud, squeeze out another couple of million, and then that's money you have to spend?

I never understood the opposition to it.

- I agree, because even for us, so EPR, we're also a watchdog as well, right?

And one of the things we've been watching closely is our economic development tax incentive programs we have that allow tax incentives to corporations to determine whether they are going to create new jobs, whether, like, losing $3 millions to $20 millions is enough for the state to forego.

Are the programs working?

Are they saying what they should be doing?

And we have sunset dates.

The Office of Revenue Analysis review these programs every year, produces reports.

I'm not sure policymakers have ever read any of these reports.

So, I would like, personally, and through EPI's lens running Inspector General, to look at that economic development program to see are we losing money here that we should be recruiting past this date?

- Because sometimes you hear, oh, the Auditor General flagged this three years ago.

What happened?

- No one read it.

- Listen, let's bring it back to the state budget under the federal lens.

The One Big, Beautiful Bill, which you like to call the One Ugly Bill, from last fall is clearly shifting, either cutting or putting the onus on states to pick up the tab.

And we found that with SNAP last fall.

How much should the states be picking up, you know, federal versus state?

It's really going to be incumbent on a lot of states to have to pick up what's getting cut.

- Well, this money was largely from COVID.

It was never supposed to be permanent, but one party wants it permanent.

And what the Big, Beautiful Bill did was increase work requirements and get illegal aliens off of the benefits.

That's basically what it did, and that's resulting in a lot of cuts and it's putting the onus on the states.

So if the states want to pay for it like it did pre-COVID, it's going to have to do it.

- So, I want to start with this whole claim about illegal adience being cut through H.R.1.

Undocumented immigrants have not had access to SNAP and Medicaid.

What the One Big Ugly Bill did was remove refugees, who are legal immigrants, asylees, who are legal immigrants, victims of domestic violence who were legal under it, so, have impacted immigrants who are here legally and have removed them from these programs they've been on since the beginning of the program.

So, I think that's the first point.

The other point is the states are going to suffer under the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.

Our general assembly, I have to applaud them, really try to mitigate some harm by passing the millionaires tax, by passing child tax credit, our first permanent child tax credit in the state, to make sure money go back into the pockets of family and to just really decouple from some of the H.R.1 provisions so we save some money.

But that is not going to be enough.

What are we talking about?

We are talking about, in our next fiscal year that starts January 1st, 2027, almost $400 million in federal funding laws.

That is a huge impact on Rhode Island State's budget.

We're talking $275 million in Medicaid laws, almost close to $60 million in SNAP laws, and that includes our error rate.

So ,whether we can bring that down or not is yet to be determined.

We're looking at hospital providers funding that in fiscal 2028 will be about $12 million.

By fiscal 2032, it's going to be close to $150 million.

So, it's going to impact our state budget.

Our legislators have to make a choice.

Ignore all of this, ignore the families that will lose it, or figure out a way to raise revenue and mitigate this.

- Wait, so they've got to decide, is the state going to pick it up, or just people going to get dropped off all these services?

- Well, on the Medicaid, that was the Obamacare expansion trying to provide universal healthcare coverage and providing states with 80 or 90% of the payments for it.

That was completely unsustainable.

And if you want to soak the rich, there ain't going to be any more rich.

We're already having a brain drain already.

We're not a country unto ourselves.

People can move to low-tax or no-tax states and our millionaires are doing that.

So, that certainly doesn't solve the problem.

- What about the argument that these are federal, we send federal dollars to Washington, they should be coming back, and it's not, I mean, there's a whole issue about, I mean, the Trump administration has lost a lot of times in court.

They've had some victories.

But that Congress, if you want to change the policy, go through Congress and then say, "All right, if we want to cut these programs, let's do it."

Rather than willy-nilly, "I don't like it because you're not doing what I like."

What about that?

- Yeah, and I think it's important for people to understand why this was cut in the first place.

$1.3 trillion was cut in Medicaid, not because the federal government needed our money.

They used that same $1.3 million and gave tax breaks to the wealthy.

They cut over $150 million in SNAP benefits.

Where did that go?

To add more to immigration enforcement and target immigrant neighbors.

So this was not really about the money in the first place.

People were getting healthier.

People were having access to food.

Why wouldn't we, as one of the greatest nations, want to provide that if it was not costing us much?

- Would it be fair to describe you as a Reagan Republican?

- Sure.

- So, fiscal conservatism, the budget has gone.

So, I remember when they did tax reform years ago, if you're going to add or cut, it's all got to be here.

Now, the deficit just keeps growing and growing and the Republicans don't seem to have an appetite, if they need money for war, fine, we'll just add it, but we're not subtracting.

And that's been some of the concern about some of the Senate Republicans.

Where's the Republican Party gone on fiscal conservatives?

- It's now a party of Trump.

We've joined the Democrats.

It's spend, spend, spend because of short-term gain.

There's very few of the fiscal- - Does that trouble you?

- A little bit, but what's going on here is, we keep forgetting that this money that the federal government spent was supposed to be temporary.

It was COVID.

The federal government basically shut down our economy.

So, heck yes, they had to provide incredible amounts of money short-term to get us out of it.

But the Democrats want that continued forever.

- Well, it was probably the third round of money that didn't need to go out because everybody knows that's what fueled inflation.

- Yeah, well- - The first two rounds, probably, the third round was too much.

- Right, the third round and the one Joe Manchin made happen was the one that drove the Republicans crazy.

Didn't need to go out, but remember, if Democrats get their way, it'll be unlimited spending, unlimited healthcare, and where are we going to pay for all this stuff?

- We have the money.

We did not cut it and put it somewhere else.

We cut it and give it back right to wealthy people.

So, the argument that we were cutting Medicaid and SNAP to give the government more money is not fair because that is not what they did with the money that it cut.

But what we usually do is we cut where vulnerable populations depend on stuff, and that is where we look at.

We should look at where the money's actually going and that is where the problem is.

- All tight, Joe and Weayonnoh, thank you so much for joining us.

And thank you.

Be sure and check us out on Facebook, X, Instagram, and on the Ocean State Media YouTube channel and wherever you get your favorite podcast.

We'll see you next time right here on "Lively."

(bright exciting music) - [Narrator] "Lively" is generously supported in part by John Hazen White's Lookout.