Indiana Democratic Party 5-19-18 Weekly Radio Address Podcast

Chairman John Zody and the 5-19-18 Indiana Democratic Party Weekly Radio Address Podcast:

The bill for holding one day of special session? $30,000. Or enough to put 4 children through preschool for a year.

TRANSCRIPT:

This is Chairman John Zody, bringing you the weekly podcast for the Indiana Democratic Party.

Well, it happened. On Monday, lawmakers returned to Indianapolis for another crack at completing their work. It was ugly. It was a caricature of the legislative process. And it didn’t need to happen.

But happen it did. Statehouse Republicans were more than willing to suspend a Constitutional rule. They blocked any public comment and prevented lawmakers from making any changes to any of the bills heard.

Does that sound like the legislative process to you? Does that sound like how the framers intended for policy to be debated and ultimately passed? No.

It’s shameful. It’s embarrassing. And it demonstrates the arrogance of the ruling party. Mistakes happen. We learn from them. If Statehouse Republicans had simply accepted the fact they had mismanaged the 2018 regular session and if they had gotten their work done, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Statehouse Republicans even went as far as to say they made mistakes. Don’t take it from me. Senate Republicans themselves admitted to letting “our time management slip away” and having “egg on our face because we didn’t get the work done”.

They know they made a mistake and instead of owning up, it was full steam ahead, plunging into a costly special session to pass bills that their own mismanagement had defeated.

You’re right to be frustrated by the process because it looks like what it is: one party, in complete control of the process for nearly a decade, muscling through whatever they deem important.

And, of course, this is all at taxpayers’ expense. The bill for holding one day of special session? $30,000. Or enough to put 4 children through preschool for a year.

The fumbling of the legislative session and the subsequent $30,000 special session perfectly underscores this point: elections have consequences. Statehouse Republicans feel like this kind of mismanagement is acceptable.

It’s why picking up seats in the Indiana Legislature is so important this fall.

Want to help make progress? Go volunteer for a candidate running for the state legislature. Sign up at indems.org/join and we’ll get you plugged in.

Please follow the IDP on Facebook and Twitter. Simply search INDems – that’s I-N-D-E-M-S on Facebook and Twitter, and follow us to get the latest news about our candidates and what we’re doing to hold our counterparts at the Statehouse and in Washington accountable.

Only together can we fight for fairness, the future and work toward a brighter and better state for Hoosiers of all walks of life to succeed in working and raising a family.

Thank you for listening.