The filing deadline for deadline for federal and statewide races was yesterday March 13th. We have who’s in and who’s out (as of recording time) and what that means for the races for governor, senate, congress, and state races. We spent most of our time discussing each campaign’s strengths and weaknesses as we get closer to the June 2nd primary date.

Towards the back half of the show, the state’s three-member Revenue Estimating Conference projected a $1.2 billion budget shortfall for next year. Democratic candidate for governor Rob Sand has called it the ‘fiscal time bomb.’ Uncertainty surrounding the current war in the Middle East and other geopolitical challenges could make the situation worse than expected. We also discuss how these budget issues could effect political races come the fall as well.

Thanks so much for following along here with IDB whether that’s listening, watching, or reading. Special tip of the cap to those of you who have become a paid subscriber, that helps tremendously. Have a great weekend!

AI generated transcript below:

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Dave Price: Hi, and welcome to the Iowa Down Ballot Podcast. I’m Dave Price, joined by Kathie Obradovich and Laura Bellin. Hello, ladies, as we record on Friday the 13th.

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Kathie Obradovich: And what a lucky day it is.

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Dave Price: Indeed. Fun fact, I got engaged on Friday the 13th.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yay, lucky for you, and lucky for Emily. Excellent.

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Dave Price: Yeah, well, I hope she still feels that it was lucky. I’ve not asked her that recently. Perhaps I should.

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Laura Belin: filing deadline day.

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Laura Belin: Filing deadline day is always very exciting, so…

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Kathie Obradovich: It may not be lucky for some candidates today, we’ll see.

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Dave Price: Indeed, when I was doing, recording my TV show this week.

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Dave Price: I was starting off by… and it’s probably because my teenage son is such a sports fan, and follows every sport under the sun, I swear. But, you know, he’s in high school, he has aspirations of playing college baseball, and so, like, National Signing Day is, you know, such a big deal for high school athletes, and for especially the ones that are…

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Dave Price: maybe more sought after, you know, they sit at, like, a table, maybe in their high school. Maybe they have the real big ones, you know, they get up there with…

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Dave Price: with their family behind them, and they maybe put, like, hats or helmets or something for some of the big schools in front of it, and there’s all this fanfare, and they’re like, da-da, and then they make their… make their big decision. It’s not quite…

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Dave Price: As dramatic, perhaps?

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Dave Price: But it is sort of, like, it’s… I don’t know what you both think of this, but… I mean, it is sort of fun to watch the candidates come in, and I’m always fascinated with sort of the theatrics of it, and how they each do it.

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Dave Price: And…

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Dave Price: for the most part, the statewide candidates where I was there, the Republicans, when they filed… Republicans and Democrats, well, one of the two Democrats, when they filed for governor, you know, kind of had supporters with them. Zach Lane.

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Dave Price: filed on Friday morning, and he just brought his family. Now, they have, like, 100 kids, in their blended family. I don’t remember how many they have, 6 or 7 or something like that, or if my kids were here, 6, 7, 6, 7.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, yeah, no, they’ve got a basketball team, it’s good.

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Dave Price: They do. So it was primarily, he just did with his… with his wife and their kids, and some staffers, and a couple of…

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Dave Price: A couple of supporters.

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Dave Price: But a few of the other ones, you know, really brought in an entourage, and…

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Laura Belin: And what?

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Dave Price: to have you. But it is also fascinating, because, you know, we just keep checking the Secretary of State’s website, and it’s not like it’s immediately posted when they go in there and drop their signatures, and all of a sudden they’re there. So there is a little kind of drama to the whole thing about, alright, who…

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Dave Price: Who collected enough signatures to submit? Who decided, it’s not gonna work?

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Kathie Obradovich: It’s odd.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, the theatricality of it, the… I think Rob Sand, wheeling his dolly with the crates of petitions through the Capitol, was probably one of the better, you know, displays that I’ve actually seen. Plus, he was able to announce that he broke a record, for the number of signatures. Now, the Secretary of State’s

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Kathie Obradovich: potentially could throw out some of those signatures. But still, I mean, that… the visual of him actually wheeling this dolly full of petitions through the Capitol, I thought was something I hadn’t seen before.

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Laura Belin: Well, and I don’t think that Christina Bohannon told anyone when she was coming, am I right about that?

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Dave Price: Alright, I didn’t know.

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Laura Belin: Yeah, I don’t think that anybody realized that she was coming, because some of the candidates, they put out an advisory ahead of time so people can get pictures, they can ask questions, and…

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Laura Belin: I didn’t know, and I haven’t talked to anybody who knew, and then all of a sudden, Christina Bohannon’s name was on the ballot, but… so some people are not seeking out that publicity for when they’re filing.

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Dave Price: I’m sort of surprised by that, maybe I’m just, like…

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Dave Price: An old, washed-up, outdated media reporter here, but don’t you want that free bite of the apple?

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Laura Belin: I would think so. I mean, several of the counties in the first district are in the Des Moines media market. I mean, you… you might think that a lot of the Southeast Iowa counties wouldn’t be getting the Des Moines TV, but some of them, I mean.

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Dave Price: But we have state… I mean, I work for a statewide TV network, so we go all over the place.

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Laura Belin: That’s right, so you’d be in the clock.

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Dave Price: So, yeah, it’s… I’m just sort of… and I’m not just saying her, necessarily, but I guess I’m just sort of surprised that if you’re running for Congress or some other statewide

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Dave Price: why you wouldn’t try to get the State House Press Corps there to get that video or picture, or… people just must have different philosophies.

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Kathie Obradovich: Especially because that video, you know, gets used as B-roll, it gets used

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Kathie Obradovich: I mean, you know, we like to go to those things, not because we really think they’re really news, but it gives us an opportunity to get some fresh pictures of the candidate, etc. So, so yeah, there’s a lot of reasons to let Des Moines media know about that, and I’m surprised that they didn’t.

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Dave Price: So, our,

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Dave Price: when… you already mentioned when Rob Sand, the Democratic candidate for governor, he went in there, so he’s got the… the dolly with all the boxes and all that stuff, and…

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Laura Belin: And they were holding the signs that said 24,000.

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Laura Belin: 56.

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Dave Price: So that… and he had… he was on… on message with his… with his campaign t-shirt, with his slogan and all that stuff. So, you know, that was clearly a moment that they wanted to use. I’m curious if either of you two were surprised that Julie Stouch

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Dave Price: collected the signatures to submit and to file for that race as well. Did you think she was going to do that, based on what you had heard?

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Kathie Obradovich: I mean, we’ve heard zero from her, really, since she announced. There hasn’t been much. She didn’t raise… didn’t raise much money. But she’s an… I mean, she’s a Democratic organizer. It didn’t surprise me that she could raise the signatures. I mean, I think that it’s gonna take

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Kathie Obradovich: more than that, for her to be able to make any headway in the race, but, but yeah, she, I mean, this is what she does, right? So it would be…

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Kathie Obradovich: it would have been surprising to me if she intended to file and couldn’t. I know it wouldn’t have surprised me if she, at some point, decided not to file or not to run, but but yeah, I mean, she… coming up with those signatures for somebody like her, not that hard, I don’t think.

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Laura Belin: I reached out to her after the fundraising reports came out, because I think she had only raised a little more than $30,000, and so I was wondering, and she indicated that she was very committed to staying in the race. And I had just noticed this week on her social media that

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Laura Belin: I can’t remember, 2 or 3 days ago, she had a video up about somebody handing over some petitions to her, so I thought, okay, she’s definitely still planning to file.

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Dave Price: But, you know, she went out there without the fanfare.

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Dave Price: just a few, just a few people who went in there. On the Republican side, Brad Sherman, who filed earlier this month, he brought a bunch of people there, signs and all that kind of stuff.

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Dave Price: Adam Steen did the same thing, Randy Feenster brought, people as well, and some of them included legislators. I mean, some others brought legislators as well. And then I mentioned… I mentioned that.

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Kathie Obradovich: Did Jim Carlin do that? We missed him.

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Dave Price: I didn’t know he was going.

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Laura Belin: I didn’t know he was going. I also didn’t get any notice, and for somebody like Jim Carlin, who’s a real long shot against Ashley Hinson in that U.S. Senate race, I mean, why wouldn’t you try to get as much media coverage as you possibly can? So I didn’t really understand that, but I completely missed it the day he filed, and I don’t think anybody…

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Kathie Obradovich: He probably would have a few lawmakers who would come and stand up behind him, too, so…

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Laura Belin: Yeah, he’s had, he has some endorsements.

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Dave Price: Yeah, I’d, I don’t… I don’t really get a lot of…

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Dave Price: of, media releases from Carlin. I’ve been on there before, but haven’t seen a lot lately, and I know, I know he said…

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Dave Price: I don’t… I don’t know. I’m just sort of surprised, but I guess, like we talked about earlier, maybe some people don’t…

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Dave Price: don’t really value this. I mean, Brad… Brad Sherman’s done…

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Dave Price: I think he said 250 events. I mean, they send stuff out, and they let us know that… that he was going to be there. Just completely different philosophies, I guess.

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Dave Price: Hey, what about the U.S. Senate race? So, we now officially have our two Democratic candidates there, speaking of, Jim Carlin on the Republican side. And Ashley Hinson did her thing, as well, and brought a bunch of people with her. Both Josh Turek and Zach Walls did some similar things where they brought

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Dave Price: Binders and signs and supporters and all that stuff, so that, that’s a fascinating race to me.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, it’s gonna be,

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Kathie Obradovich: I think a… one of the most hotly contested primaries that we’re gonna see, I think, for…

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Kathie Obradovich: for, the congressional seats, both Walls and Turek have strengths and weaknesses, I think, and Walls, for a primary, I think, geographically, he’s well-positioned in, you know, a lot bluer part of the state, for a, for a general election. Turek being in, Council Bluffs, I think.

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Kathie Obradovich: because, you know, that that’s a… that might be actually a better, position for him. But, you know, you’ve got, a…

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Kathie Obradovich: Wall’s probably a little bit better known in democratic circles. Turek has a great story as a Paralympian, and, you know, the, he has a, just a, I think.

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Kathie Obradovich: a really, you know, he’s got weight to him, you know? He feels like when he speaks on the floor, he has

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Kathie Obradovich: yeah, I don’t know what the word I’m looking for is, but he’s got gravitas, I guess? You know, he…

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Kathie Obradovich: People pay attention when he speaks, I think. So you’ve got, you know, I think you’ve got, two, candidates who have an opportunity to be really attractive for a wide range of Democrats.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, you’ve got a sort of a narrative out there that Walz is the progressive and Turek is more moderate. I don’t know if that necessarily holds up, you know, but… and you’ve also now got,

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, there’s sort of a knock against Turek that he’s, you know, he’s the choice of the Washington, D.C, Democratic establishment, which, again,

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Dave Price: You know, there’s… there’s been a little bit of engagement there. I don’t think they’re pouring money into his campaign at this point, or at least they hadn’t been, so we’ll see how that goes, but that’s definitely one to watch, and I certainly wouldn’t make any predictions.

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Dave Price: And I should mention, sorry to interrupt you for one sec, I should mention we will deep dive the U.S. Senate race in next week’s podcast as well. Sorry, Laura.

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Laura Belin: I was just gonna say, I think that whoever wins the primary is going to come out a stronger candidate for having the primary. Earlier this week, I had a chance to speak with Joe Trippi, who’s a longtime Democratic strategist, and he’s done quite a bit of work in Iowa. He actually had a field organizer job, he told me, in the 1980s in Jones County. So, anyway, but we were… now I can’t remember.

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Laura Belin: which candidate he was working for before the caucuses, but… so he spent a lot of… but he worked on Howard Dean’s campaign before the 2004 caucuses, he worked for John Edwards before the 2008, and he’s just been involved. He said he was involved in Don Avinson’s campaign for governor in 1990, so he’s very familiar with Iowa. But we were talking about this general issue of Democratic primaries that, for some reason, I don’t know when this happened, that…

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Laura Belin: Democrats got scared of having a primary, that it would be damaging for the general, and he talked about the recent Texas Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, and he thought it was fantastic. I mean, there were some harsh words exchanged, but he thought that James Tallarico was going to come out as a stronger candidate. He and Jasmine Crockett both generated tremendous turnout for a Democratic primary in Texas, and

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Laura Belin: He sounded very upbeat about the Iowa Senate race generally, and thought it was a net positive to have two strong candidates in the primary.

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Dave Price: And I feel like a lot of these more recent high-profile matches, maybe Senate, maybe Governor for Democrats, you do see a lack of primaries, and I have asked a lot of the people involved with this lately. And, you know, obviously there were some others who thought about running

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Dave Price: and then did not in the governor’s race because of Rob Sand, and because of the financial advantage that he was going to have on a lot of folks. I…

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Dave Price: Again, I always say I’d see this not as a campaign person, so maybe I’m naive to some of this, but I don’t see why a primary is bad.

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Dave Price: It’s risky, perhaps, if you’re not good, or you get exposed for something bad, maybe. I don’t understand why it has to be so terrible. Why does it not actually strengthen? And I keep thinking, the media are forced to cover these campaigns

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Dave Price: More frequently, if there’s a primary matchup, right?

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Laura Belin: I have said that to so many Democrats, David. People… last year, before Jennifer Conference ended her campaign for Congress.

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Laura Belin: I don’t know how many Democrats came to me agitated and worried about Jennifer Converse and Sarah Trungariat, and one of them should drop out, and one… and I… why? I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. When you have an uncompetitive primary, the candidate gets less media coverage. I’ve always felt that Cindy Axne really benefited from having several primary competitors in 2018. She went from being

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Laura Belin: almost completely unknown to really having a sharper message, and she came out of that primary as a stronger general election candidate, and I certainly think that mostly that would be the case. I mean, there may be scenarios where the primary gets to be so negative and personal, and there are hard feelings, but I think that’s much more rare than the positive sides of candidates having to be battle-tested and come through a primary.

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Kathie Obradovich: not just candidates, but campaigns. You know, it gives you an opportunity to shake down your campaign, you know, figure out what works, what doesn’t work, you know, the exercise of raising money, and then if you do win the primary, and especially if you win a competitive primary, that’s a big momentum builder going into the general election as well. So I think there’s just… there’s more upsides than downsides, really, unless, as you said.

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Kathie Obradovich: It gets really negative.

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Laura Belin: But just even from the… just the nuts and bolts of having an accurate voter list, I mean, multiple campaigns pounding the pavement, trying to ID supporters and get them turned out for the primary, they’re gonna find out who’s moved, who’s really living here. I mean, it’s gonna… it should benefit all people, all of the candidates on the ticket in the general election, if you’ve had that

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Laura Belin: Competitive process in the primary.

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Dave Price: You mentioned, we mentioned Julie Stouch earlier in this show. I’m interested to see what that primary ends up looking like. Clearly, she does not have the campaign resources that SAND does.

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Dave Price: But how aggressive will she come after him? And can she put the infrastructure together to be competitive? And can she be out and about all over the place? Is she going to do something completely non-traditional? She hired Heather Ryan.

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Dave Price: who ran for Congress, I can’t remember in what cycle.

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Laura Belin: 2018. But she ended up not filing, but yeah, she was a candidate.

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Dave Price: Yeah.

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Dave Price: Clearly she is a… she does things her way.

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Dave Price: With words that we don’t put on television,

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Dave Price: And has the name of an organization that I wouldn’t say on television. But she has a social media following, and you know, she is kind of this…

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Dave Price: influencer-type persona, where she puts on costumes and wigs and stuff, and does these skits, and, you know, makes fun of Kim Reynolds or Joni Ernst, or what have you. I mean, she has this…

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Dave Price: kind of network, and now, apparently, Stouch has hired her to work for her to kind of build out.

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Dave Price: And maybe she’s gonna use social media as a way to connect people in ways that traditional television and radio advertising have done in the past, because it’s doubtful that Stouch would be able to

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Dave Price: afford that unless she finds some way to really start bringing in some money pretty quickly. But, you know, big picture, is she gonna make Rob Sand a better candidate?

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Laura Belin: I think that one thing people have to remember is there’s always a group of people who don’t like whatever the establishment favorite is in any race, and an example I like to give is in the 2014 primary for… Republican primary for governor. Terry Branstad had a primary challenger, Tom Heffling, that… I don’t know that he ever even did any events. Nobody heard of him. I mean, who was he? I don’t think he spent any money

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Laura Belin: And he’s still got, I think, about 17% or 18% of the vote in that primary, even with Branstad being the incumbent governor. So there are always… there’s going to be a protest vote. I mean, there are Democrats who don’t like Rob Sand, who don’t like his messaging, who don’t like the way he seems to suggest that both parties are equally bad, and he’d rather be an independent. So Julie Stouch, even without spending any money, she already… there’s…

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Laura Belin: some group of people who will be drawn to support her. And she’s been talking a lot about water quality, and I think that that’s an issue that… I mean, Rob Sand, it’s not that he hasn’t talked about it at all, but Julie Stouch has released a more detailed plan, a more aggressive plan on water quality than anything we’re likely to see from Robsand. And so, I mean, there’s certainly a reservoir of support that she could draw.

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Dave Price: Reservoir? Well done.

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Kathie Obradovich: Brilliant transition.

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Dave Price: Got it. And when she filed this week, she did talk about water, and I think probably talked about that more than any other topic, right?

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Kathie Obradovich: And I’ve been to a couple of her events, and it’s something that she prominently mentions, and she also wrote a guest piece for my website last year with a very detailed… I think she also published it in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, but very detailed outline of the water quality policies she would pursue.

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Dave Price: And stylistically, she seems like that will be her thing.

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Dave Price: you know, she’s not a sound bite, you know, coming from the broadcast side. Sand, I think, probably understands and, is,

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Dave Price: I don’t want to say better, but we’re not picking favorites here, but is probably more versed and skilled at talking in soundbites.

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Dave Price: Where Stouch may not be that. I think it seems like, early on at least, that her position is going to be the issues, the solutions. I’m listening to you, you told me what the problems are here are some solutions for them, kind of the ideas person, and try to push sand on that.

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Laura Belin: And she also has been talking about big money and politics, and so there are people who are suspicious of all of the big money that Rob Sand raised from relatives, but also from other people who, you know, very wealthy people. There’s a natural distrust. I mean, I don’t think that that’s a concern for the majority of Democratic primary voters, but certainly for some, it could be an issue.

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Kathie Obradovich: It did compare her, strategy to the, Brad Pitt movie, Moneyball.

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Dave Price: Yeah.

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Kathie Obradovich: So I thought that was an interesting sound bite for her, and I didn’t quite follow… if I’ve seen that movie, it’s been a long time, but… so I didn’t quite follow the analogy, but I thought, okay, well, there’s… there’s something that I didn’t expect.

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Laura Belin: She was saying that when your opponent is making a mistake, don’t tell them, so she wasn’t.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yes, yes, I agree.

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Dave Price: One thing about…

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah.

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Dave Price: People… no disrespect to her and her analogy here.

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Dave Price: As we baseball fans know.

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Dave Price: P.s. Brad Pitt went to the University of Missouri. I’d just like to point that out. I did not graduate, though. Anyway, I believe he was journalism when he started, too. Anyway,

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Dave Price: In Moneyball, which is about the Oakland A’s, as they were called back in the day, their whole way was to come after baseball in a different way, don’t go out there and get the big sluggers and pay big money and all that, and they prioritized getting on base, all those things. They didn’t win, though.

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Dave Price: They weren’t World Series champs, so in this analogy, you gotta be a little careful.

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Dave Price: as your example, because while they came up with a different way to do it, they did not win, and if winning is ultimately what you’re trying to do.

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Dave Price: You may have to find another example as well. But it does… it is fascinating to me that here you have this woman who has been part of campaigns for a long, long time.

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Dave Price: first of all, now she’s the candidate, right? Which is a… has been a challenging transition for others in the past, but she is promising early that she’s going to do this completely non-traditional type…

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Dave Price: campaign for someone who’s been part of more traditional campaigns for a long time. A whole different way to look at all of this.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so can we just talk about the REC for just a second before we…

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Dave Price: Sure.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, so the Revenue Estimating Conference, which is a three-member panel, and the three members

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Kathie Obradovich: are one, you know, basically one from the governor’s office, one from the legislative fiscal Bureau, which is nonpartisan, and then a member, chosen, I believe, right by the other two.

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Kathie Obradovich: And…

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Kathie Obradovich: So what they… their job is basically to, you know, prognosticate what the state’s revenues are going to be. In December, that revenue estimate is used to actually base the budget on by law. They just had a March estimate in which they adjusted the revenue downward, significantly, I thought, 9% about, compared to their, budget

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Kathie Obradovich: Their previous estimate, is that right?

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Dave Price: I think it was their previous estimate.

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Kathie Obradovich: 100% sure.

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Laura Belin: The previous estimate was, like, 8, 8.5%, now it’s gonna be 9%. But I thought… do they… I thought that they used the lower of the two estimates between December and March. Are you saying that they always use December?

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Dave Price: Use March as the… as the one.

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Kathie Obradovich: Thank you so much.

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Laura Belin: I thought that if March is lower than December for projected revenues, they use March.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yes, that’s true. That is true. So, they base the budget on the December estimate by-law, but yes, they have to… they have to adjust if it’s lower in March, which is why we never see any budget, targets until after the March REC.

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Dave Price: Are we gonna see budget targets this year?

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Kathie Obradovich: I don’t know.

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Dave Price: Join?

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, but I… you know, my point, and they also lowered it, another, 4 plus percent, for 97, and…

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Dave Price: I don’t want to interrupt you. I think they actually increased that slightly.

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Dave Price: for 27.

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Dave Price: Still down.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, just a tad bit. Sorry, I just started talking about this without checking my numbers, but LSA…

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Kathie Obradovich: was, was lower. They split the difference between LSA and the governor’s office, and it was, LSA was a lower number, more worried about the effect of the Iran war, for example, and the farm economy than the governor’s office was. So, so yeah, but I did think, you know, going into a midterm election, that that

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Kathie Obradovich: lowering the number again, for 2026 was kind of a gift for Democrats, who have been talking all along about Republicans, kind of running the budget, in red ink here. So…

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Kathie Obradovich: So I do think that that was kind of a significant event, even though it’s marginal, I think, in terms of how we’re going to see it play out in the budget.

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Laura Belin: I am extremely skeptical that the revenues will start to bounce back in fiscal 2027 and 2028 like they’re predicting. I haven’t had a chance to check in with some of my budget experts since yesterday’s REC meeting, but I talked to some people who are… who know a lot more about the state budget than I do after the December meeting, and they said that one of the issues that you don’t hear from Craig Paulson.

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Laura Belin: budget director or anyone in the governor’s office, is that now that we have a flat income tax, during the rebounds.

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Laura Belin: our income tax revenues are not going to increase as much as they did in past times, like when maybe the economy was a little soft, and then we came out of the soft economy, and the state revenues really rebounded, because now we have a flat income tax. So, they don’t seem to be factoring in for that. They seem to just be assuming that things are going to be good. And I really continue to believe that.

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Laura Belin: Especially by 2029, that

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Laura Belin: the state budget is going to be in a terrible position. And I think that that’s one reason why Republicans are setting things up. If there is a Democratic governor, for sure, they will be blaming the Democratic governor, but they’re trying to lock a lot of things in now to make it difficult for the next governor to change course.

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Dave Price: When we get into numbers.

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Dave Price: and humongous numbers like this. I don’t know what it’s been like for you two, but… I mean, this is a hard… for me, these things are hard to cover.

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Dave Price: Because I’m no budget expert, and we’re also doing stuff differently, as you point out, with this flat tax and others. I mean, they have substantially decreased taxes about a half dozen times, right?

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Dave Price: for both personal and on the corporate side. And it is sort of a…

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Dave Price: Kind of a leap of faith, really.

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Dave Price: for voters, I feel like, that you’re… you’re going to have to trust Republicans, that the numbers are gonna play out the way they say they are. We’re not having back-to-back years of…

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Dave Price: a billion-plus in deficit, where they’re gonna tap the reserves, and there’s that legislation that they’re looking at where they could potentially fill that gap with 100% of the taxpayer relief fund. I think Paulson said…

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Dave Price: They have $5.6, $5.8 billion left in surplus funds that they can use, but clearly that can’t go on.

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Dave Price: Forever, and he’s still of the belief that, you know, 2-3 years from now, whatever it’s going to be, this sort of gets right-sized, and eventually it starts going up, and even the…

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Dave Price: Even the recalculation for the 27 fiscal

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Dave Price: budget and revenues and such. While they did just slightly increase it, you’re still talking about

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Dave Price: you’re gonna have to dip more into the surplus, so… which is why you’re hearing the fiscal death spiral and such talk by Brian Meyer and others.

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Kathie Obradovich: I don’t know why Republicans haven’t pivoted their messaging on this. I mean, there’s a lot of examples out there, first of all, that you can’t cut your way to revenue growth. There’s been a lot of, you know, look at Kansas, for example. You know, they talk about making Iowa competitive, but the fact is that states all around Iowa, especially the red states, all also cut taxes.

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Kathie Obradovich: So it’s kind of a race to the bottom there. It seems to me like a more reliable message for Republicans would be.

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Kathie Obradovich: We are forcing government to do less.

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Kathie Obradovich: You know, that this is… we are, you know, we’re A, letting people keep more of their money.

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Kathie Obradovich: But we’re also going… we’re using this to force down the size of government, which, you know, tends to, if you leave it alone, tends to grow and grow and grow. So, I mean, I think that the problem with that is that there are services people still want from government, they still want good schools, they still want

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Kathie Obradovich: you know, you know, certain things to happen, and so there’s always a push and pull there. But to… to continue to say, alright, we’re gonna cut taxes, and that’s gonna lead to economic growth.

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Kathie Obradovich: Maybe, but it may… but that won’t necessarily lead to revenue growth in the state. And, you know, they… I think they need to…

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Laura Belin: Cut that, you know, cut that expectation back and just say, look, we’re reducing the size of government here.

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Laura Belin: But they, I mean, they’ve already cut taxes. They did a big tax cut in 2018, they did another big one in 2022 and accelerated that, and we… we haven’t seen the economic boom that they said that was coming. And, like, as Kathie mentioned.

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Laura Belin: didn’t work in Kansas, didn’t work in Louisiana, and it’s not… I mean, we don’t have booming business growth. We don’t… we have one of the lowest rates of personal income growth. And so, I’m just so skeptical that this is going to work out. Dave mentioned the numbers, the 5.8 or $5.9 billion. I think, if I understand the way that breaks out, there’s about $4 billion that’s in this taxpayer relief fund.

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Laura Belin: And then there’s another, the $1.8 or $1.9 billion that’s, like, the ending balance, the surplus. But if you’re pulling more than a billion dollars a year combined from those sources, that’s gonna run out by around, probably.

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Laura Belin: 2029 or 2030, as I mentioned, and so I think that the fiscal death spiral warnings… I think that it is warned, or I guess Rob Sands’ preferred terminology is fiscal time bomb. But either way, I am very skeptical that we’re going to come out of this. But Craig Paulson, the budget director, he talked to us after the REC meeting yesterday, and he said he feels better now.

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Laura Belin: than when… than he did in December. So, they take that for what it’s worth.

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Dave Price: Kathie , I’m so glad you brought this up the way you did. That has been something I’ve thought about for a while, that isn’t this safer…

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Dave Price: message from Republicans to voters to say exactly the way you did. Don’t promise this

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Dave Price: incredible growth later. If some kind of growth happens later.

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Dave Price: Celebrate it, that’s the icing on the cake.

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Dave Price: But, big picture, we’re gonna lower the tax rates, make this more attractive to people from else… people from elsewhere, because we do have to grow this population that we’ve struggled

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Dave Price: for a century to do in this state, and we are going to force government to be more efficient, we’re going to look at mergers and all kinds of other stuff, but when you promise this growth, Democrats can keep pointing to that to say that we’re not seeing that.

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Kathie Obradovich: Yeah, and voters, you know, so if you look at your tax return, you know, most of us, you know, who aren’t making millions of dollars, you know, that’s a marginal tax cut on the income side.

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Kathie Obradovich: Which is why I think they’re still, kind of beating their brains out over property taxes, which is, you know, what… what voters, you know, tend to get more emotional about for, you know, for whatever reason. So, you know, you’ve got, all of this, all of this tax… these taxes that they’ve cut.

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Kathie Obradovich: They’re wrestling with the budget issues as a result. In the meantime, they feel like they still need

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Kathie Obradovich: a tax cut to go into the midterm elections. They can’t afford to cut income taxes anymore. Property taxes, of course, when you cut that, it’s some other branch of government, it’s local government who has to deal with the fallout of that, the budget issues. And so, property taxes, while complicated and difficult to actually do any real good or real change…

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Kathie Obradovich: That is one that they can safely do without really further impacting their budget. Of course, depending on how they structure it. One way to cut property taxes is for the state to take on more local government expense, and, you know, they’ve tried that in the past, but they can’t afford that this year.

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Dave Price: Your point about

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Dave Price: about that people aren’t feeling this a lot of times. That’s exactly why, in our reporting, I do not include the talking points about averages, whether we’re talking about state of Iowa or now federally.

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Dave Price: the supporters of the One Big Beautiful will frequently talk about the average tax cut, which is completely irrelevant.

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Laura Belin: Right. I feel like, to most people.

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Dave Price: you’re not getting that. And also left out of this is the fact that, yes, people are getting tax cuts with One Big Beautiful.

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Dave Price: But we’re also putting another $3, $4 trillion on the credit card, right? And, you know, we can’t do that in the way that the state operates. We can… they can deficit spend, as they’re doing here, up to a certain point.

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Dave Price: But I don’t… I don’t believe in dealing with these averages numbers. It’s so disingenuous.

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Laura Belin: Oh, yeah.

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Dave Price: I just read a… I read a bunch of, you know, once you reach a certain age, you start thinking about retirement, of course, and so I follow a bunch of people on Instagram and elsewhere about…

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Dave Price: you know, planning for retirement and all this, and there was just an article I read yesterday about you should not look at what the average is, and this was, I think, some sector of 55 to 64, so kind of that chunk thinking about, you know, when can I, when can I, am I able to, and whatever.

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Dave Price: And the difference between the average 401K and… What most people have.

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Laura Belin: was a difference of, like, half a million dollars.

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Kathie Obradovich: Okay.

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Dave Price: And I forget the figures off the top of my head, but let’s say it was, like, $700,000-$800,000 for people on average in that age group, but that’s not where most people were. It was, like, 100 and something for most people in that… in that bracket, that demographic. And I feel like it’s the same with the tax cuts. That’s why you can’t talk averages here, because that’s not relevant to most people.

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Laura Belin: I can’t remember now whether it was the 2018 or the 2022 income tax cut, but I do remember Democrats talking during the debate, because the Republicans, they did have a talking point about whatever the average was. But if you were making… if your income was a million dollars a year.

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Laura Belin: you were going to be getting a tax cut of something like $67,000 every year, which is more than even the median household income across the state of Iowa. But if you were making… if your household income was $50,000 or $60,000 a year, you might only get, you know, a few hundred bucks, which, it’s not nothing, but it’s not something that would be life-changing for people in that income bracket. So, yes, I completely…

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Laura Belin: Support you are not using average figures for tax cuts or many other things.

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Dave Price: May I just say, as we wrap up this week, the irony for me that I have just spent a half hour talking to you both, I wish I had a little tally next to me for every figure we use, because I have this running joke with my good friend Kay Henderson from Radio Iowa about, as two broadcast people.

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Dave Price: We really try in our stories for On Air to use as few numbers as possible, because it’s so hard for people

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Dave Price: to follow, and this is where we envy print folks, who can put more of that in there. In this podcast, I have no idea how many numbers we just used this week.

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Kathie Obradovich: frustrated.

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Dave Price: pad.

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Kathie Obradovich: I demonstrated why it’s a bad idea, because I got… I got all my figures wrong, so… and I’m the person here, too.

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Laura Belin: But you… but look, if we’re talking about the state budget projections, you can hardly do that without using any numbers. You do have to use some numbers.

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Dave Price: Indeed. I’ll close with the number of 13, so I think this was a good, lucky discussion, let’s hope. Friday the 13th. Good to talk to you both, have a great weekend.

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Laura Belin: Thanks, you too.

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Dave Price: I think…

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Dave Price: Thank you for all of our new subscribers for the Iowa Down Valid podcast. We very much appreciate a lot of extra… extra ears and eyes on our conversation over the last several weeks, so we very much appreciate your support, especially those of you who’ve become financial contributors to keep this sucker going from week to week. Our thanks to Spencer Dirks.

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Dave Price: for producing this and putting this all up and distributing to the masses, both in our state and apparently beyond. We do have some

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Dave Price: maybe some former Iowans or some others who are curious about what’s going on in Iowa these days. So thank you for all to you for supporting what we do here on the Iowa Down Ballot podcast and the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Have a great week ahead, and we’ll talk to you next week.

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