Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed State Senator Mark Pody (R-TN-17) to the newsmaker line to discuss his discontent for the proposed state budget, his personal agenda, and his focus on patients’ rights.
Leahy: We are joined on the newsmaker line now by our very good friend for many years, State Senator Mark Pody. Good morning, Mark! How are you?
Pody: Good morning! I’m doing terrific and I’m excited to be on the show. You’ve got a good show going on already.
Leahy: Well, it just got better. (Carmichael laughs) It just got better. Tell us what is on your agenda as a state Senator, one of 32 people now because the state Senate expelled Katrina Robinson, who’s been convicted on wire fraud.
So you’ve got 32 members of the state Senate right now. What is on your agenda as the Tennessee General Assembly convenes today?
Pody: I have actually had to go to Wisconsin. My father-in-law has just passed away. So we are making the funeral arrangements and such and taking care of that. But I’ll be right back in a couple of days.
But on the agenda for us, at least as far as our office, what we’re working on is I’ve got to try and find a way to make sure patients’ rights are protected in Tennessee. We’ve had too many, story after story of people going in the hospital and their loved one is in the hospital and they don’t have any rights to see them.
They can’t talk to them. And even what they’re prescribing is, they’re saying, please, we do not want a vent and they’re being put on a vent anyway. They’re not getting the medicine that they would prefer to have.
And it is up to individual patients to decide what is best for them. It is not up to the government, it’s not up to insurance companies, it is up to us to make decisions about what we want for us. So if an individual wants Ivermectin or something, that is a legal drug that they can prescribe and they should be able to get it. So we’re working on patients’ rights.
That’s probably my biggest key issue that I’m going to be working on this year. And then followed by, I did not like the budget at all. I was very, very frustrated with the numbers that I’ve seen in that budget.
Leahy: Let’s talk about the budget. That’s a pretty definitive statement: “I did not like that budget at all.” Tell us the top reasons why you did not like the budget proposed by Governor Bill Lee at the State of the State Address a week ago today.
Pody: So, if we look at – and this is going to be facts that anybody can look up – on December 8, 2021, one year ago, there was a budget proposed by this governor, and it was $41.8 billion.
Now we go 51 weeks later and we look at the budget on February 1, 2022 which he proposed, it is now $52.5 billion.
Leahy: Let’s just stop for a moment. Are you telling me that the budget for this year that he first proposed – or was that the budget for last year that was $41 billion?
Pody: $41 billion.
Leahy: Is that the budget that was approved by the Tennessee General Assembly?
Pody: That’s the budget that was actually proposed by the governor last year.
Leahy: And what did it end up being? What was the number last year?
Pody: It was very close to that. Very close to that.
Leahy: About 41, 40 billion. Now, this budget is an increase from $40 billion to $52 billion. Do a little bit of math here. That’s about a 30 percent increase in one year.
Pody: Yes. It’s going to be close to over a 25 percent increase. It is horrible for us to consider, being a conservative Republican, as I would consider myself – fiscally responsible – and yet we’re going to have a 25-plus-percent increase in the budget? That is not acceptable.
Leahy: Let me just stop for a moment. I want to ask Crom – this is a huge increase. How did you and I miss that? It was such a huge increase.
Carmichael: That is an enormous increase. Where are the biggest increases?
Pody: If we look at what the state budget was, it was $21 billion on February 8, 2021. And February 1, 2022, we actually got $26.4 billion. That’s about a $5 billion increase in state revenue.
That was money that we got above and beyond what we were expecting in sales tax and so forth. The federal government, we had anticipated getting $14.7 billion last year, and this year we’re saying we got $19.8.
And, of course, the federal government gave us a lot of extra money for COVID and things like that. So between those two itself, it is about a $10 billion increase.
And that’s where this extra money is coming from. It’s not the extra money that we got that is a big concern, it is “what is it that we’re doing with it?”
If we got $10 billion over and above what we had anticipated in the budget, that means we got overcollections. And how much of that money are we returning back to taxpayers?
Leahy: Well, that’s my question, Mark. You and I first got to work together when we were reporting on the gas tax increase which you opposed. You led the charge against it. Governor Haslam jammed it through the Tennessee General Assembly in 2017.
But now with all these surpluses, I wonder why there’s not a proposal by the governor to reduce the gas taxes. Your thoughts, State Senator Pody?
Pody: And it is ironic because if we look at the numbers, what you and so many people have said is the gas tax is not going to be the way to solve our issues. It’s proving itself correct. We’re having to put more money in from the general fund into the rope projects and including this budget we’re doing that as well.
The gas tax is going to be something that’s going to be continuing to be stagnant or start going down as there are fewer and fewer people that are going to be using gas. As more people are coming in, I’m going to tell you there will be more people using electric cars.
It’s not going to be the way that I think some people are thinking about in the future. But the gas tax is a stagnant number and inflation is going to make that where we are not going to be able to count on that gas tax.
If we would have gone with, like the Hawk Plan or some of the other plans that were out there and we’re looking at how much money was collected for the gas tax compared to how much could have been put in by the other plans proposed, I think we’re seeing that the other plans proposed would put more money into the road fund than what we’re collecting right now. So I think history is proving us correct when we were opposing that.
Leahy: On your own personal agenda, you’ve got the Patient’s Rights Act. Who’s cosponsoring that in the house and what are its chances of passage?
Pody: Todd Warner is, and I think we have a very good shot at getting this passed. There have been so many people that have contacted our office where they said, you know, I had a perfectly healthy spouse go into the hospital and they died.
And they died because of what they were given in the hospital and not because of what the patient themselves wanted. They said we could not talk to our patient, our loved one.
We were stuck outside in the parking lot and they said we had the right of making medical decisions. They had those forms signed and such. And they were not being accepted by the doctors.
Leahy: Last question for you, State Senator Pody. You served in the Tennessee House of Representatives, 99 members. And you also serve now in the Tennessee State Senate, 33 members. We’ve got a minute left. What’s the difference in the atmosphere in the House versus the state Senate?
Pody: I would say that the House might be a little bit more conservative than the Senate is right now. I’m going to say having served in both of them, the House might have been a little bit more fun as far as debates and things like that. And in the Senate, we’re a little bit more not as I’m going to use the word …
Leahy: Here’s what you don’t want to say. You don’t want to say not as fun. We’ll say something else. More staged, perhaps?
Pody: Yes. Let’s just say we’re more professional in the Senate in how we debate things and work things out than we were in the House.
Leahy: Senator Mark Pody, thanks so much for joining us. And sorry for the passing of your father-in-law, and I wish you good travels and good luck coming back to Tennessee. Thanks for joining us.
Pody: Absolutely. Thank you.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
My senator, Haille, is anything but a conservative. And I do not care how “professional” the senate claims to be. I would much prefer rowdy if that resulted in common sense and conservative legislation.