Latest / The SEANC View / Budget debate heats up with Senate's proposal

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Budget debate heats up with Senate's proposal · The SEANC View

• 0:00
  Music.
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  Hello, and welcome to this week's edition of the Scenic View podcast.
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  I'm your host, Jonathan Owens, Communications Director here at Scenic,
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  State Employees Association of North Carolina for our new listeners.
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  And I'm joined today by Executive Director Artis Watkins, Government Relations
• 0:27
  Director Suzanne Beasley, and Podcast Producer Sam Klein. Welcome, everyone. Thank you.
• 0:33
  Thank you. Today is Thursday, April 10th.
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  It's the start of the Masters, and that's what I meant. Is it?
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  That's what I was paying attention to there earlier.
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  John's seasons are based on sporting events.
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  Mostly sports related. I keep thinking about the time that we were about to
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  podcast and I had like Wimbledon on. And you were like, why are you watching Wimbledon?
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  Sometimes it gets dire for John. All the sports. All the sports.
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  Anyway, it's a beautiful day here in Raleigh. Maybe a little chill in the air.
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  Is it supposed to be colder this weekend?
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  I think it's going to warm back up. Yeah. Okay. I thought it was supposed to
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  warm back up. What happened? Because it was supposed to be cold like Tuesday, right? Yeah.
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  I think it's going to stay, though, kind of nice compared to what it was last
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  week. Good yard work weather. We've been in fake spring. Yeah. Yeah.
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  As long as it gets warm enough for me to put my plants back outside, I'm okay. Oh, yeah.
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  They all had to come back inside a week after I had just planted them all.
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  So we're stuck in this studio instead of outside in the sun.
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  But we do have a fan now, so that's cool. We're going to talk about important
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  issues for state employees and retirees, as we always do.
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  As usual, we'll start with the legislature.
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  Yesterday, the News and Observer reported that the Senate's budget proposal
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  will be released next week. Yeah, we're here on Monday.
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  Monday. Well, that's pretty early in the week. But generally,
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  that's what happens. It comes down on Monday evening.
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  You've got to plow through it pretty quickly to get ready for votes.
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  Don't have the specifics of what's in that bill, obviously, right now.
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  But as soon as we do, we will push that information out to you guys.
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  But yeah, Monday looks like the big day for the Senate proposal.
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  And from that story, I think it was in the under the dome section of the News
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  and Observer. It said that they expected votes by the end of the week. Right.
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  Right. So there'll be not much discussion on it. Generally isn't.
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  That's pretty much how it's gone the last, well, years.
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  You know, they release it on Monday. You better plow through it so you know
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  what's in it. And then Wednesday and Thursday are usually votes.
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  And remember, they're saying they didn't take much issue with Governor Stein's budget that he put out.
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  To recap, he proposed a 10% raise for teachers and admin folks like principals,
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  but most people in the schools would get 2%.
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  So your teaching assistants, folks who work in the cafeteria or school bus drivers,
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  things like that, would get 2%. So that's kind of a lot of people, that's misleading.
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  They think everybody in the schools would be getting 10% if the legislature
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  adopted Governor Stein's budget.
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  But it's just teachers and principals. It looks like that's targeted towards,
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  and then the rest of state government, he proposed the 2% and a one-time $1,000 bonus.
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  And I saw there's a story, I guess, yesterday, too, that the House and the Senate
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  agreed on a spending limit. Is that correct? It's like $800 million.
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  Yes, the modern era thing is for them to get together and figure out a spending
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  cap that they just agree amongst themselves. We're not going to go beyond.
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  And, yeah, they've done that. Whether they adhere to it or not.
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  But as part of that story on the Senate budget coming out, it said that the
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  DAVE Act would also be in the Senate's budget, or it likely would be in it.
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  So, yeah, that's some chatter, too. If you guys remember, the DAVE Act is a
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  piece of legislation that we've told you guys about, and it proposes that a
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  division be set up within the state auditor's office that would address government efficiency.
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  Specifically by looking at each agency to determine if, in their opinion,
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  this division of the auditor's office thinks the agency's needed,
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  but also any vacant positions to determine if they believe those vacant positions are needed.
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  And the act also includes something about the ability to use AI for that. Yes, yes. That's right.
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  But otherwise doesn't lay out the parameters of how they determine if these
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  positions are needed or not.
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  And plus that division would require employees.
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  Yeah, it'd be an allocation of money to have employees to do it.
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  However, what I find most interesting about it is that a lot of legislators
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  are saying, hey, look, we're not saying that whatever the auditor or his employees
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  in this section, this Dave section,
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  whatever they come back to us and say to cut, we're not saying we will.
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  We're just asking them to tell us. Now, how in the world would a legislator
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  say, nah, y'all been studying it and you've used whatever metrics you've used,
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  but I'm just going to decide I'm not voting with you? without getting shellacked.
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  So, of course, they're going to have to rubber stamp it, right?
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  And so, if they don't, the only thing you can do as a legislature is have your
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  own nonpartisan professional staff, fiscal research, which have been there for
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  decades doing this kind of work when needed,
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  have them look at it. That would be a check and balance.
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  That would let a legislator know they really agree.
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  However, if you're doing that, that's duplicative and one might argue inefficient.
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  You already have the nonpartisan professional staff of fiscal research,
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  which has kind of always been considered an unparalleled staff of the legislature,
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  and people have expected the legislature.
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  They're appropriating the money to make sure that they should be the ones making
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  sure by hauling agencies in to report to them, to answer the tough questions,
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  and provide the documentation to fiscal research.
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  That's how it's always been done. So I find it strange that the defense of this
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  is, we're not saying we're going to do what they tell us to do.
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  Well, if you don't, you're going to have to spend more money to run the same
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  program somewhere else to know what to do. So it's just ironic at best.
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  So you just said that a nonpartisan, maybe apolitical group recommends things.
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  Traditionally, it has been very, very vital, and it has been the case that the
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  fiscal research staff at the General Assembly is a nonpartisan professional
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  staff that the public could rely upon to give advice to all legislators of either party,
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  and they've behaved that way. That is what they've done.
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  So then turning this over to an obviously political... Well,
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  you have to run under some party to run for a statewide elected office.
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  So doesn't that seem to suggest that they want it to be political?
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  I mean, arguably, politics has to enter the room when you put it under a statewide
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  elected office where somebody's got to run under some party's banner.
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  Yeah. It's just, do you think people in North Carolina, when they check the
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  box for the state auditor, they thought that he would have this much power or,
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  you know, I mean. No. Like, is this a thing?
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  Well, I mean, he didn't until they passed legislation to. Right.
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  I don't think anyone really knew what the state auditor did.
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  I mean, that's fair. But no, I don't think anybody was expecting that the state
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  auditor would be telling the legislature, here's the state agencies that you
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  should keep, and here's the vacant positions that are supposed to provide public
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  services that you need or don't need.
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  And I used AI, so. And also, how is AI going to tell them?
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  I don't. Still don't know. There's a lot of unanswered questions.
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  And I'm not saying you can't use AI.
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  Maybe you can. But again, somebody would have to plug in some input in order
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  to get anything out of AI.
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  And we used the example last week. How many probation parole officers are you
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  going to tell the AI you want per 100,000 or quarter million North Carolinians?
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  You still need that human input.
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  So State Auditor Beth Wood, when she was in office, she was almost seen as apolitical.
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  She had friends on both sides. Well, yeah, she made a big deal out of saying she needed to stay.
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  And it just seems like that one position would be less political than most of
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  the other, because it's kind of like your umpire, you're calling balls and strikes,
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  right? Well, it's really sensitive work they would be doing.
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  Like this Dave Act, and it did pass the Senate. And the Senate's pretty clear
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  it's going to be part of their budget that's coming out next week.
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  So the House is going to have to decide, do they want that in there?
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  At the end of the day, the one thing we can all agree on, I say at the end of the day a lot.
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  But anyway, the one thing we can all agree on, and we say this all the time
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  in committee, there is not a soul who thinks it's a bad idea to look at every
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  program we have. But I don't understand.
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  It's almost like pretend now that we never had these legislative committees
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  charged with doing that and who, in fact,
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  would meet and take testimony from agency employees and review do documentation, and make changes.
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  I don't know. It's like we're acting like we need to rediscover fire.
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  It just seems to me that we already have fire. That's not a task you can enter
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  into with an agenda and do it fairly.
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  Well, and look, I don't know what if any agenda Auditor Bullock or any auditor
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  that follows him would have, but I can tell you this,
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  you're just not going to have faith out of the public and certainly out of the
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  employees in the same way that you would with the legislature,
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  the legislative staff recommending,
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  you know, looking at these things and legislative committees hashing them out.
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  But, you know, we'll have to see how this plays out.
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  You know, there's always a shuffling of the deck a little bit in terms of what
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  agency heads get in terms of powers. So who knows?
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  And just to bring it back full circle to members, why should members care about
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  this? Why should members care about the DAVE Act?
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  So the main difference between the DAVE Act and any other DOGE effort is that
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  it's only directing the auditor to look at agencies themselves as whether or
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  not they're needed and vacant positions as to whether or not they're needed.
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  So it's not a government efficiency thing. It is literally about agencies and
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  state employee jobs, and that's it, as though that's all there is in government spending.
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  All the while, there are literally bills being filed this week that would appropriate
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  money to non-governmental entities.
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  So we're worried about efficiency, but we're going to suggest spending more
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  money on non-governmental entities that there is nothing in the bill about how
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  we will track that money How the auditor's office will track that money.
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  You'd have to add so many people to the auditor's office First of all I don't
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  know how many they even plan to add I don't think they know But all the while
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  You have more bills giving more money To different groups You know,
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  a couple million here A couple million there And then that The auditor staff
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  would need to look at all of that as well Obviously.
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  This DAVE Act is not a governmental efficiency effort.
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  It's just looking at vacant positions, which we can't repeat it enough.
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  The number of state positions has declined greatly, more than 20 percent in
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  the last 15 years, while the population has increased by 16 percent.
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  So it is not as though we are awash in state government positions,
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  and that's our problem in terms of money.
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  That is very hard to believe you're going to provide adequate services when
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  you're that far behind the population growth and you think of cutting some of those vacant jobs.
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  And just to clarify, the DAVE Act, I guess it doesn't matter after Monday,
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  but the DAVE Act is actually a Senate Bill 474.
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  One other thing, one of the things that I've found interesting is that,
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  you know, the state auditor noted he had a lot of vacancies in the auditor's
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  office when he took office, and that he's filled a lot of those.
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  And so that ability to fill them kind of led him to believe,
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  just out of experience, that it must be that state government's just not working
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  hard enough to fill these positions.
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  That is definitely not what we've heard out of the agencies.
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  Now, they get frustrated over the way we have to do hiring right now,
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  but the Office of State Human Resources has a director in Stacey Myers who's
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  told the legislature, I'm turning that on its head. We're going to make that
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  a lot more efficient. So that concern is solved.
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  But if you want to know why those positions are sitting vacant,
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  if you go to that great fiscal research division we have at the General Assembly, go to their website.
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  Go to the General Assembly's website. Go to fiscal research.
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  Click on the documents. There's fascinating stuff there.
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  And one of them shows that over a 10-year period.
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  From January of 2014 until the end, December of 2023, so a 10-year period.
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  The cumulative change in wage and salary income, not benefits,
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  but wage and salary, for North Carolina citizens,
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  so your basic North Carolinian, that was a 78.3% increase in their wage and
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  salary over that 10-year period.
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  For North Carolina state employees, 18.5% increase.
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  That's why you have vacancies. That's our whole point. That's the whole point.
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  And that comes from not our heads, not our hearts. It comes from data,
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  hardcore facts that are on the fiscal research divisions, part of the North
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  Carolina General Assembly website.
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  When you give 18.5% raises over a 10-year period and everybody else in North
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  Carolina got 78.3% during that period, you're not competitive.
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  Hopefully that'll be fed into the large language model AI that does this work, the chat in CGTP.
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  That feels like a large bell just ringing in their face of ding,
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  ding, ding, here's your problem.
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  So you just said that the auditor was saying that he didn't have as much problem filling roles.
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  I'm sure it's a lot easier to hire an $80,000 auditor's position in Raleigh
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  than it is, say, in prison in Green County or something, you know? Yeah.
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  But even they would struggle. I think they need to be paid more as well because
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  I know the professional positions are extraordinarily difficult.
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  You cannot compete. The benefits we're supposed to make up for that.
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  And of course, everybody wants to,
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  chipping away at the benefits. The health plan is going to go up this year without
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  question in terms of cost for the members.
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  The dependent care coverage in the health plan remains out of reach and the retirement.
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  Yeah, you no longer get the health care after you retire either. So that started in 21.
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  In 21, they took that away. And a steady chipping away. Yeah.
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  So you cannot offer 50% less, which is what that is, the difference between those even.
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  Yeah. Oh, whoops. See, I do need some AI. It's 60%.
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  It's a 60% difference. That's crazy. But I'm just an English major. You're a lawyer.
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  They can't count any better than an English major. So another bill pertaining
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  to the state auditor came at some interest this week. It was House Bill 549.
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  Several parts to the bill, but one particular part would change the amount of
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  employees at the auditor's office that fall under the SHRA protections.
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  Yeah, it actually would make all of the employees of the auditor's office exempt
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  from the SHRA, the State Human Resources Act.
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  You know, so it would pull all those employees out from under those protections
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  that the act was created for. So, yeah, that's problematic.
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  An artist was saying, I think I overheard you saying that that's kind of a slippery
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  slope, right? If it happens to one, it'll keep happening. Oh, yeah.
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  I mean, who doesn't want the ability to just hire the folks they want instead
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  of the folks they've got? But that's why it's government.
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  You have protections for government employees so that things that happened for
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  decades and decades no longer happen.
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  And the deal is you never know who's going to come along that would take advantage of it.
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  I doubt we have anybody that's been elected to office or appointed to office
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  to head up these agencies who would require loyalty or require people to keep
• 15:51
  quiet about something they should not. I don't think we have that at Well,
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  but you never know when you could.
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  The way you keep from ever having that problem is to have the openness and transparency
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  and protection so that employees are willing to come forward.
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  And especially in this era of wanting efficiency and to get rid of fraud,
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  waste, and abuse, you have to empower employees to be able to come forward and report it.
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  This would actually suppress anybody's willingness to do that because their
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  livelihood could be shut off by coming forward to do the right thing for the public.
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  And state employees want to
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  do the right thing. And state employees are already kind of standoffish.
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  They don't want to come right out and say things, which is why we hear from
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  them, because we can go have those conversations that an employee may not feel
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  comfortable having about any number of situations within an agency.
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  It's just kind of ironic that I've always seen the SHRA as being apolitical.
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  Like, that's the reason it exists. It is, because you used to be able to require
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  your employees, if you wanted to, to go put political signs in people's yards or at intersections.
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  You could do that back in the day prior to some of the pieces of the SHRA.
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  It was crazy. I mean, everything, it was the Wild West and state government back in the day.
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  And so over time, these protections have been put in place for the public and for the employees.
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  But really, at the end of the day, the public is the ones that should want their
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  tax dollars to pay for salaries of people who are beholden to them and no one
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  else and not worried about anybody but the taxpayer.
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  Or if they're not doing their job, that's a whole other issue.
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  And this SHRA lays out responsibilities for state employees as well.
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  So if you're not doing your job, it is, contrary to popular belief,
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  absolutely doable to fire somebody in state government. You'll hear,
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  oh, you can't fire a state employee. Yeah, you can. You just have to document.
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  It has to be done correctly. And it's a continuity of government type thing, right? Absolutely.
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  Politicians come and go, but the public services and the people who know how
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  to do them, that's been the backbone of our government.
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  So where does that bill stand now and what goes from here?
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  That bill did pass the J-1 committee.
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  It'll go to state and local government next. And then I don't think it has a referral passed there.
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  I guess it would go to the House floor. Now, we asked a lot of questions in
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  committee that day because there's so—right, that's why we're here.
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  There's a lot of unknown in that. Why, for instance?
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  Why would you take an entire agency and take away their rights—
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  Two things can be true at one time. We think it would be ridiculous to take
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  away those State Human Resources Act rights from folks in purely admin positions,
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  clerical-type positions, for instance.
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  Why in the world do you need people who serve at the pleasure of the agency head?
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  You do not. The only thing traditionally you've needed those exempt positions
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  for is people who have very sensitive managerial policymaking decisions.
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  But, you know, on the other hand, like, let's take these new DAVE Act positions, for example.
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  Should they be SHRA? They wouldn't be doing clerical type work.
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  They would be doing auditing.
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  It would be auditing, but it would be a different kind of auditing than just financial records.
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  They'd be making recommendations. Is that managerial or policymaking in the
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  way the Stay Human Resources Act has defined it traditionally? No.
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  Again, two things can be true. You've got people who are doing clerical-type
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  work, and then you've got people who are doing routine professional work.
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  Those people don't need to be exempt for a much more important reason.
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  They are the ones looking at this information to determine if we should keep
• 19:26
  agencies that serve the public or people that serve the public.
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  And my goodness, I can't think of anything that needs to be less political than the people doing that.
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  They need to know they should feel free to come forward and say,
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  actually, that's not what I saw when we looked at the information.
• 19:43
  And like we have an auditor here at Scenic. What if we were able to pick the
• 19:48
  people who. Right. Instead of hiring outside.
• 19:52
  Impartial. Yeah. And I'm still not clear. Well, that's a whole other issue. But yeah.
• 19:57
  Yeah. We could talk about this all day long. You need somebody outside and impartial
• 20:00
  to be doing this work. But how can you be deemed impartial?
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  Even if you technically are.
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  If nobody leans on you in any way. If you're not protected by those SHRA rights.
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  Anyone could say these people are political appointees at the end of the day.
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  They're not nonpartisan protected people. And you don't want that.
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  Or else nobody will have any faith in the decisions made and offered to the
• 20:27
  General Assembly as recommendations. That's kind of futile.
• 20:30
  Yeah. Well, we're definitely in the thick of the fights down there, huh? And you... We are.
• 20:34
  So I got a question for you. So this week I created a page for our bills that
• 20:39
  we're tracking, right? And it was so many bills. It is.
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  So you can go to our website and under advocacy, you can go to bill tracking
• 20:47
  and see all the bills that we're tracking.
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  But I tried to categorize them into issues.
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  It was good. And it was so hard.
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  So my question is, how do y'all do it?
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  You have to be the only lobbyist down there that have this many issues to cover.
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  So what happens is, you know, the flurry of bill filing starts.
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  And so you just have to every single day.
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  And we tried to do this throughout the day. Keep up with what bill's being filed.
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  And if it even remotely could involve our people, you just go ahead and put
• 21:13
  it on the list, then you go back your bill.
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  So, yeah, I mean, and folks, if you look at that list, those are things that
• 21:19
  we're keeping our eye on.
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  It doesn't necessarily mean that all of those bills will actually make it to
• 21:24
  the floor. Or that we support or oppose.
• 21:26
  Yeah, we may not have a position on specific things, but it's important to track
• 21:30
  it just to stay up on what's going on, you know, in the minds of legislators,
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  you know, and what we may possibly need to work towards going forward.
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  But yeah, it's a lot of bills, but interesting reading.
• 21:43
  Yeah, I think I told y'all that I cheated at the end and just created a category
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  called miscellaneous and just stuck a bunch of them in there.
• 21:51
  It was great, though. We've always said that, too. There are some things that
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  are just miscellaneous.
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  Like the state cookie is on there. It feels important.
• 21:59
  What's the one? We did have a discussion about it. There was a weird one.
• 22:02
  Oh, the state TV show, Andy Griffith.
• 22:05
  Did y'all see that, Bill? I did see that.
• 22:08
  I mean, that makes sense. North Carolina, yeah. I mean, but I couldn't think
• 22:12
  of any other show from North Carolina.
• 22:15
  One Tree Hill. Oh, yeah. Dawson's Creek.
• 22:18
  You know, I hate that. But those were like non— I hate that kind of bill.
• 22:21
  Just hate it. The Andy Griffith show is definitely the most classic out of those.
• 22:25
  Yeah, and it is—like, those are kind of nondescript areas.
• 22:29
  Like, I guess Outer Banks. Hey, what about the Outer Banks contingent?
• 22:33
  Outer Banks. I would love that to be a show. But they didn't film here.
• 22:36
  They filmed in Charleston. That's true. But it's supposed to be here.
• 22:38
  Well, they didn't film Andy Griffith here.
• 22:40
  They filmed it. They thought there was a ferry or a bridge from the Outer Banks of Chapel Hill.
• 22:45
  A ferry to Chapel Hill from Outer Banks. So they don't care.
• 22:48
  Which I think is hilarious because half of the cast is from North Carolina.
• 22:53
  And I was like, no one's going to tell the director that that's not.
• 22:56
  The director's from Chapel Hill.
• 22:58
  And no one's going. Or Durham or one of them. And he said ferry. We're on a tangent.
• 23:05
  We'll have our own separate podcast. Sam on pop culture in North Carolina. I would love that.
• 23:12
  I would listen. You can be on it too. We can talk about Taylor Swift. Yay.
• 23:17
  So speaking of fun, let's go to John's Wacky Weird Question of the Week.
• 23:22
  John's Wacky Weird Question of the Week.
• 23:23
  Music.
• 23:28
  Yay. So it's theme park season here at Scenic for what, about 40 years now.
• 23:34
  We've sold theme park tickets at a discount to our members And it's a big undertaking
• 23:38
  for us, but it's also a very popular program.
• 23:41
  Up until recently, they were sold through the credit union's branches,
• 23:45
  but now everything is online. Since COVID, yeah.
• 23:48
  So everything's moved online. So you can come to our website,
• 23:50
  scenic.org slash theme parks, and you can check out all of our offerings.
• 23:55
  I think we have five or six parks on there now. We're still adding some as the
• 24:00
  promo codes are sent to us. But yeah, we have it up and running.
• 24:03
  I think last year we talked about
• 24:05
  your favorite theme park. That was our question of the week, one week.
• 24:08
  So this year I'm going to do, what is your favorite thing to do at the theme parks?
• 24:13
  Anyone want to start? I'll go. Okay.
• 24:16
  I like the rides. I don't like roller coasters that much. If I'm going to Disney
• 24:20
  World, yes, I will ride every single one that my family rides because I don't
• 24:24
  want to go to Disney World and miss out on any roller coasters.
• 24:27
  But I like the fun little rides that they...
• 24:31
  Like the Peter Pan ride. That's exactly what I thought about.
• 24:35
  I'm actually not a big teacups person because my family never liked it growing
• 24:39
  up because all of them get motion sickness spinning around.
• 24:41
  We like the Dumbo one at Disney World. I like going on It's a Small World just
• 24:47
  because it's funny to watch my parents get irritated.
• 24:50
  Wait, your dad, like Rambo, gets motion sickness? Yeah. Wow.
• 24:54
  It's bad. That's hysterical.
• 24:56
  Really bad. We go on a boat, and me and him both have to get prescription medication.
• 25:01
  So all the enemy really needed to do was spin him around a couple of times. Probably.
• 25:06
  We made Cameron, my stepson, he's now in college, but when he was like 11 or
• 25:11
  12, we went to Disney World, and we made him wait in line at It's a Small World.
• 25:16
  And it was like a two-hour line, and we were like, oh, it's going to be awesome.
• 25:19
  You're going to love it. It's going to be so cool.
• 25:21
  When we got in there, he was so mad. It's such a long line for such a ridiculously
• 25:27
  boring ride, but it's an experience you have to do.
• 25:32
  I like this. No, you don't. So my answer is, I guess, I like the water rides,
• 25:37
  especially the one that like goes up and then just goes right back down.
• 25:41
  We used to call those a bamboo shoot. Yeah, a log float. Yeah.
• 25:44
  Ironically, that was, and I don't know why, as a child, we grew up going to
• 25:49
  Six Flags and that was my mother's favorite ride. And I was,
• 25:52
  we were children, so she couldn't just leave us to go ride the ride.
• 25:56
  So they would tell us it was the only way to get out of the park.
• 25:58
  Oh, okay. I did not, I still don't care for the log flight.
• 26:01
  My mom always made us do the water rides at the end, like before we left.
• 26:05
  So you're not walking around slopping wet. Well, they have those cool dryer things now. Yeah.
• 26:09
  I don't think they did back then. But back in the day, I haven't been to a theme park in a long time.
• 26:14
  Maybe that'll change since I got grandkids, but...
• 26:17
  But roller coasters were my thing. I loved a good roller coaster. Yeah. So that's yours.
• 26:22
  Disney World doesn't have a lot of roller coasters, by the way.
• 26:24
  They have good roller coasters, but they don't have a lot, which is why I'm
• 26:28
  okay with going on every roller coaster my family goes on there because there's not that many.
• 26:34
  But Busch Gardens has way more. They do have awesome rides there.
• 26:37
  But what about you, Artis?
• 26:39
  I like the roller coasters as well. And then at King's Dominion,
• 26:42
  they have something, the Drop Zone. Okay. I love that.
• 26:45
  No. You know, where you just go up, you're all on a big, like on the exterior
• 26:48
  of a circle, and the circle goes up.
• 26:51
  And then, you know, when you least expect it, they drop. I like anything that
• 26:54
  drops you when you leave. I wrote that at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri.
• 26:59
  Scared the crap out of me. I will never know. The dropping doesn't scare me,
• 27:04
  but what did scare me, we were there one time.
• 27:07
  And, you know, we always go when it's hotter than blazes.
• 27:10
  And it went up, and it's like four in the afternoon, so that sun is coming.
• 27:14
  You know that late afternoon sun.
• 27:16
  And beating on those people, and it got stuck up there at the top. Oh, no.
• 27:20
  Now that, yeah. Your leg's dangling, and the sun's beating down on you,
• 27:25
  and it's August, and no, thank you.
• 27:28
  I know so many people love roller coasters because of that feeling in their
• 27:32
  gut whenever they feel the drop.
• 27:34
  That is the thing that I don't like about roller coasters.
• 27:37
  Because everyone else takes it as like, it's a fun feeling, exciting,
• 27:40
  exhilarating. And I'm like, my body is saying I'm going to die because we're
• 27:44
  about to go straight down.
• 27:46
  We need to stop. It's the wind.
• 27:49
  Weightlessness, right? Yeah. It's the wind for me. No one said food.
• 27:53
  I guess I can't really think of any. It's so expensive.
• 27:56
  It is very expensive. I guess the Dole Whip at Disney World is the one food
• 28:02
  I would probably think about. The Dole Whip.
• 28:04
  I don't really remember anything super exciting. That's like,
• 28:06
  you get the chance, John.
• 28:08
  You got to go to the Dole Plantation and get some Dole Whip there. It's amazing.
• 28:12
  Yeah, that would be cool. It's also really cool to see how pineapple grows. It grows on like a bush.
• 28:17
  It's not like a tree. The Dole Whip is, I think it's what, vanilla ice cream in pineapple juice?
• 28:23
  Is that what it is? It's like a pineapple whipped gelato. It sounds like it would be with cool whip.
• 28:28
  It's really good. It sounds delicious. Yeah. Very good. Refreshing.
• 28:32
  That's the only theme park food I can really think of.
• 28:35
  Carowinds used to have the bubble gum ice cream on Snoopy Island. Oh, goodness.
• 28:41
  Well, that's our show this week. Just a little drop in to update everyone.
• 28:45
  And stay tuned for the scoop in the Senate's budget next week.
• 28:49
  And next week, we'll probably have a jam-packed episode.
• 28:52
  I'm certain. Thanks, everyone, for joining us.
• 28:54
  Music.