Latest / Breaking The Meta / $16 Milk in an Oil State: Inside Alaska's Governor Race | Tom Begich
Transcript
- Breaking The Meta: Hello everyone and welcome to Breaking the Meta. My name is Mike Winson. Today we are sitting down with Tom Begich, who is running for governor of the cold, snowy state of Alaska. Hello, Tom, how are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm looking forward to you. You are the first person that I've ever talked to in Alaska. So this is really exciting for me. Tom Begich: I'm good. How are you doing? Oh well yeah I'm absolutely here I'm in my I have an upper office you can see a little bit of the mementos in the back but yeah right here my office downtown Anchorage about maybe 15 blocks from where I was born so Breaking The Meta: Yep. Yeah. No, there you go. Let's start off with a very simple ⁓ background on who you are and why you're running for governor. Tom Begich: Well, that's a great big and broad question. As you said earlier, my name is Tom Begich. I have lived here all my life, grew up here. My father was actually a member of Congress here, died in a tragic plane crash while running for re-election. And that kind of colors myself and my other five siblings, shaped our lives in many ways. All of us went into public service of one type or another, a couple of teachers. I myself did a little teaching back in my junior and what would have been my senior year and then went off to college, came back here, started a small business doing research work and communications work which I continued to do to this day and originally I was writing history plaques and then it morphed into juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, mental health work, working on substance use prevention which I still work on today and also suicide prevention. So really cut my teeth. giving up a lot of the more lucrative work to go back into community organizing in my 30s. And then sometime after that, I got involved in a couple of really major lawsuits with suing the state over education issues of whether we can provide adequate education in terms of our facilities, in terms of the services we provide, are we serving our minority populations and our majority populations equally, and to the best ability that the Constitution of Alaska says we should. All that stuff led me to run for office eventually. ran for state senate in 2016. And I got elected and in my freshman term, two years into my freshman term, my colleagues elected me as minority leader. We were six of 20, but in the end we really, really helped guide the direction of the body. Built a bipartisan coalition. You it was a de facto, as they say, coalition. In fact, we worked with the other 12 to 14. Republicans I say 12 to 14 because two of them were kind of never picking a faction but six on one side six another and there are six kind of negotiated all that and then that led to My guidance in helping create the formal bipartisan coalition that governs the state Senate to this day I'm still very active with that with the only state union with bipartisan coalitions in the house in the Senate But beyond just working within the coalition I also had the skill set of working outside of it working with whomever the majority of minorities were on either Breaking The Meta: Mmm. Tom Begich: And with the governor that quite frankly I didn't always get along with but we got major policies done So that's a little bit about who I am. also a professional musician I continue to play and perform. I've got a bunch of CDs out I get like a dollar and a half residuals every month, you know But that means that I got like 5,000 Spotify hits, you know, so good But I do a little bit of that a little bit of ⁓ you know a little bit I still do a lot of my community work because you know, I to make a living and ⁓ I've got Breaking The Meta: Wow. Hahaha Tom Begich: I guess one last thing I'd add is I also worked with the IBEW, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 35-year member, retiree in the Musicians Union to this day. It's an AFL union, American Federation of Musicians, and I'm proud of that, and I'm proud of my retiree status with the state of Alaska, which is AFSCME local 52, state 52. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. So Alaska is very unique in the union in the sense of I think a lot of people don't realize how different not that not that you are different people, but the stuff that affects you is very different than than those of us in the contiguous 48. ⁓ Specifically, things like climate change are obviously very ⁓ Tom Begich: It's true. Breaking The Meta: very much of an effect on day to day life for the people in Alaska, especially as you go more north. What are the... Yeah. Tom Begich: Well, yeah, well, I mean, actually, affects us all. You asked earlier and I didn't answer it. But why am I running? And I'm running because it's an open primary and there are 17 candidates running. Now, one of them ⁓ actively talks about climate change and the impact it's having on not just on the north part of the state, but throughout the state. Climate change, we have ⁓ climate change that's affected fish habitat. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Tom Begich: It's effective and we feed ourselves. Subsistence fishing, commercial fishing, we feed the world. we're watching climate change have an impact, overfishing's having an impact on that as well from the trawl fleets that are based in Seattle. And there's nobody trying to work out how do we make this work because fish are going to feed the future. We got to figure out how we preserve this high protein ⁓ in the face of climate change. We're also an oil producing state, as you know. You know, mean, our carbon imprint's bigger than any state in the Union, except for maybe Texas, possibly North Dakota. But, you we really, we have an obligation to be aware, not just of what climate change is doing to the planet, but be planning for the future of it. I'm running because I don't hear people talking about how are we going to move into, you know, this next 20 and 30 years. How do we sustain our state and shift from, you know, a carbon-dependent economy? into an economy that's more dependent on renewables, dependent on our, renewable being our permanent fund which produces income from cash. These are the things we have to be thinking about. How do we be a better steward of our resources? We recognize that those resources are going to be produced. How can we be a better steward and move away from a dependency on that very resource? And I've talked about that since the beginning of my, well, long before my Senate career, but one of my very first speeches was called Whale Oil. and really reminding people that at the turn of the 19th, 20th century, know, suddenly nobody needed whale oil anymore and the entire market in Alaska fell apart in six months. All around the world, and you know this, but all around the world, we're seeing every major nation, except our own, shifting to renewables. Every nation. That means within 20 years time, outside of plastics, there's no real market. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Yep. Yep. Tom Begich: for oil and gas. You literally are driving those markets away. And that's healthy for the planet. It's healthy for the environment. And for Alaskans, we need to be thinking about that, you know, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And so I want to jumpstart that conversation. I want to bring up a lot of young people to ensure that they are mentored into responsible roles of guidance, this economy, guidance of this ecology, guidance of this environment that we live in. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Tom Begich: Because otherwise this planet will shed us in a moment, but it'll continue to go. It has before we were here and it will after. So my goal is to try to make it work together. Breaking The Meta: Exactly. Yeah. So obviously, we talked a little bit about you, you talked a little bit about already the climate side of things. But just in general, just to give people an idea of Alaska that don't know much other than it's up north right next to Canada. What kind of things do do people there care about? What are the what are the big pain points for the people of Alaska. Obviously, it's a big state and you're wanting to represent the entire thing, but just to give people kind of an idea. Tom Begich: Well, you know, the primary issue that I keep phrasing a little bit, I think we got bad connectivity. That's an issue up here, by the way, connectivity. But ⁓ the primary issue up here that really has been driving the dialogue for the last ⁓ maybe I would say decade, there are two issues, and they're kind of related. The first is whether or not we are fully and forward funding our education system. And I know everyone talks Breaking The Meta: Mmm. Tom Begich: education but that actually is meaningful to me. Yeah I think I mentioned this at the very beginning but you know I filed two major lawsuits or I'm not a lawyer but I worked with the people strategize the two major lawsuits that we won that really underscored the importance of getting a quality education ensuring that education is available to everyone. That has been an ongoing debate for the last seven and a half years the governor up here has resisted efforts to fund education. And so I was able to build a compromise and a bill that we called the Reads Act. And that bill put high quality voluntary pre-K into our what's called base student allocation. That means that we're not a K-12 state anymore, we're a pre-K-12 state, one of the few in the union. Because you know, working across the aisle, you can actually make certain things like that happen. But the second piece to that, the other issue that constantly comes up is we've never developed a coherent fiscal plan for the state. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Tom Begich: We've always been depending on one more war, like this one that's happening now, or one more disaster. Ukraine kicked the price up too when the Russian invaded Ukraine. We cannot be dependent on these things. We must build a sustainable economy. So those two issues are always at the forefront. But you know, housing, medical care, we got the highest housing costs, some of the highest housing costs per capita in the nation, some of the highest medical costs per capita in the nation. It's just really, from our perspective, that cost of living issue when you're paying 16 bucks for a gallon of milk. Think about that for a minute. That's 16 bucks for a gallon of milk. A gallon of diesel fuel in Veneti, a little village that we have here, goes for the same price. A gallon of diesel fuel for 16 bucks. You know, we're an oil producing state, sure, but we pay the second highest gas prices across the board than anyone but California. Breaking The Meta: ⁓ my gosh. Yeah. Tom Begich: You know, and they get tax money, we don't. So think about that for a second. So education, number one, budget, number two, and then the whole issue that the president pooh-poos, but affordability, it's real for us just like it is for you. It's absolutely real. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. I mean, I would argue in many ways it's more real for you guys because of how far north you are, you have to import even from your own country a lot of the stuff that you do. It's not trucks. Yeah. Tom Begich: Even oil and gas. We actually import it because we don't refine it here. We're third world that way. We're third world. And when you think about it, that's just odd. That a ⁓ state in North Dakota, they produce it, they sell it, and they also produce it right there. they actually take the time to refine it right there in Texas, too. So they get cheap gas. We don't. We ship it out. Breaking The Meta: Right. Right. Tom Begich: We've been owned by multinationals for so long up here, our resources, that I'm done with it. I just think it's time for us to take our resources back. It's time for us to work to ensure maximum benefit for Alaskans. I just don't see, I mean, again, going back to your original question, if there's a reason to run, that's the reason to be in this race. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Yeah. So I guess that brings up a really interesting question is how do you see yourself in the position as governor doing all of those things, taking a lot of that back for the people of Alaska? Tom Begich: But one thing I've talked about is I've talked about a fiscal plan that makes sense. 36 states collect an internet tax or an internet fee is what I call it. That right now would be recurring income costs. would generate for a $6 billion budget, would generate $35 million additional dollars to that budget. Now, that doesn't sound like a lot. That is a lot of money. That pays for two years pre-K each year. So when you think about that, that's a calculated amount of money. We passed a bill. bipartisan passage, but the governor vetoed it and we didn't have enough votes to override as I should say we are not serving right now. But our legislature fell short of the threshold, which is the highest in the nation for overriding the veto. I'm going to sign that bill the day it comes to my desk and that'll be in the first 30 days of the legislative session. Number one. Number two, the oil and gas company been getting credits. They walked into Alaska in 2014, changed our tax policy. told us you gotta retool every 10, 11 years, know, pop the hood, see what you need to do. Well, it's been 11 years, so I'm gonna pop the hood. We're gonna change that oil and gas policy. We're gonna lower the credits they get. They get credits for producing our oil, even though they're the highest profit-making businesses in the world. We give them $8 credit per barrel, and we run half a million barrels through the pipeline a day. Breaking The Meta: Right, right. Tom Begich: So you begin to think about the kind of money we're talking about here. We estimate if we took those $8 of arrow credit slotted into zero, it'd be worth $250 million. And we have an oil company that actually doesn't pay property tax because it took a different designation, what we call an S-corp. It's a loophole. Well, we want to make that loophole not apply to businesses under a certain value so that they can't take all the rest of the companies that are operating up here as assets. Breaking The Meta: Wow. Yeah. Okay, yep. Tom Begich: and dump them off the property tax rolls. So you did those three things, it's almost half a billion dollars in revenue that's reoccurring every year. And the thing about it is you ask how it can happen. The Senate Resources Committee just ripped apart the governor's bill on his revenue bill, which was kind of half-hearted, and they put my plan in it. Why? Because I have a good relationship with these guys, Republican and a Democrat. And that underscores what I think can happen here. Breaking The Meta: ⁓ wow. Tom Begich: I worked with the minorities and the majorities that are presently in power today. Worked closely with them, built trust relationships with people. Didn't always agree with them, but that trust relationship in a 60 member total, 40 House, 20 Senate body, gives you the chance to actually get these things done. And I'm pretty sure in the first 90 days, that recurring income I just identified for you will happen. And if you get that recurring income, you begin to fully fund education, you can get there. you can begin to jumpstart our taking resources in the state and using them to help people get to renewable. My house, this house I'm in right now, $2.69 was my electric bill in July. That opportunity, that's solar panels. The opportunity for other people to do that, that's the state responsibility. We should be working to help you make your houses more energy secure and energy efficient and at the same time alternative energy that eventually you can sell back to the grid. These are the things that actually can transform the state. Again, not a whole lot of people talking about that, but those are the things that we have the ability with a governor in line with the Senate and the House that are strong coalitions led by Democrats and nonpartisans and moderate Republicans. Those coalitions with the governor get that done, and we can get it done. Breaking The Meta: ⁓ One of the other things that I think comes up a lot, especially in terms of politics and politicians, regardless of the side of the aisle you're talking about, is this idea of accountability or the lack thereof when it comes to them. What does accountability mean to you and what does being held accountable by the people of Alaska look Tom Begich: Well, first it comes down to actually telling them the truth. If you're going to put an idea on the table, there's an idea kicking around here now that creates some kind of an endowment for our permanent fund and the money we make from oil. But the fact is an endowment requires two thirds of the body of the legislature to do it. So it's actually not going to happen. So you're promising something to the people that I think is a good idea, but you're not telling them how you're actually going to get there. So it's not going to happen. Breaking The Meta: Hmm. Tom Begich: So you create this feeling among people that there's a possibility of hope or change, and then you can't fulfill it. And I actually go back to the Obama presidency. I voted for Barack Obama because he wanted to get us out of two wars. And then it didn't happen. And you know the feeling that all of us have when we're let down, especially by the people we support. That becomes very, very difficult. So I've been very transparent in this campaign, saying, this is what I want to do. and this is how I pay for it and this is how we get to being able to pay for that. And then when somebody throws an idea out, I'll say, that seems like a good idea if it is a good idea. And here are some ways we might be able to get there, but I'm not gonna be able to do it alone because what you're talking about means I gotta persuade a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate to go for it. And so let's talk about what the strategy is for doing that. So part of accountability is say what you mean and then mean what you say. In other words, make sure that if you're going to make a commitment to something that you post those commitments, you make them clear to people. And then if it fails, you talk to them about why it failed. don't blame somebody. You say, is the circumstances that happened. This is why it failed. This is what I need if we want to get it passed. Or, you know, in the case of like ROL industry, as a senator, I couldn't look at the books because I had to do an NDA. You know, and I looked at the books and I saw something I didn't like, I couldn't talk about it. Well, that's ridiculous. There's no constitutional mandate for that. That's just corruption. And you you've got to stop that. for me, it's full transparency. We were asked this about school districts. You how do you hold a school district accountable for spending all the money we're giving them? You know, and I said, you know, we why don't just ask them to post their budgets online and, Breaking The Meta: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Tom Begich: districts have many way and most districts didn't oppose that idea and so we put them online. I said but but if you really want to hold a school district accountable you shouldn't give them their budget two weeks before their fiscal year begins because it's kind of hard to do a little bit of planning when you only got two weeks and a billion dollar budget for your school district. So anyway that some of the ways of that you know regular contact talking on the media ⁓ going in and doing what I Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Tom Begich: done as a community organizer, go into community and listen for a change instead of talking at a community, listen to the community, learn from the community, and then lead because you've done the work. I've got more ideas going around the state this last five months, six months than I've gotten in all the six years I served in the state senate and then even before that. People are full of good ideas and we have to Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Mm. Tom Begich: create an opportunity for them to put those ideas out. Give them a shot. Fail upwards. I've said this to some of young people who work on my campaign, younger people, people in their 20s and 30s. Don't stop worrying about not succeeding on one of these things I'm asking you to do. Let's try to do it, and if it doesn't work out, let's figure out what happened so we can do it better next time. It's only going to make us better. You don't have to perform for me. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Yeah. Tom Begich: I'm not going to perform for you. We're not seals. You know, we're humans. We're going to make mistakes. So anyway, that's the way I would do it. Breaking The Meta: Yeah, yeah. That's the world I live in. It's always try something new and see if it works. And if it doesn't work, you try something else. ⁓ Tom Begich: I must say though, you're pretty smooth on a mic. As a musician, I'm like... Breaking The Meta: I have been doing this for quite a while now, so I have gotten kind of used to it. Alaska also has a large indigenous population that is a part of it. Does what they look for from a governor, is that different from the rest of the population of Alaska? And how are you interacting with them and hoping to help them? Tom Begich: That's correct. Yeah, that's a good and very complicated question, but I can answer it, I think, you give me just a moment. Number one, education is common for all of us. So one of the things in the Reads Act we did is we ensured that there would be culturally based education so that, see, if you can learn a language, regardless of the language, your ability to learn any language goes way, way up. All the data shows that. And it also shows if you back it up with strong reading, again, regardless of the language, Breaking The Meta: Absolutely. Tom Begich: By the time you're in fourth grade, you're actually holding on to all of the gains you made in your pre-K. In fact, the Perry Pre-K project actually multi-generationally shows those gains last upwards, so far anyway, upwards for three generations. Better jobs, better outcomes, and criminal justice. That resonates with our indigenous communities because they were neglected for education for a century. So what we're doing with our education efforts, and both of the lawsuits I filed were on behalf of Breaking The Meta: Mm. Yeah. Tom Begich: rural school districts, which is where our indigenous population predominantly lives. They dominate our rural areas. It's not like rural North Carolina. Rural Alaska is heavily, heavily Alaska Native. So I spent like 25 years helping set up tribal justice systems. It's a different way of thinking about justice. Working through, you know, I was the community justice coordinator for the state for a while, and what we did is we set up community courts that Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Tom Begich: the communities themselves designed based on their own traditions. And then we dealt with minor offenders, juvenile justice offenders, and what's called ICWA, or Indian Child Welfare Act courts as well. And the idea was to really bring governance local in a, not a paternal relationship, but a fraternal relationship, so that we're working as partners, not as ⁓ a patron and follower, basically, which has been this paternalistic. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Tom Begich: approach to indigenous people across America has just failed miserably. You know, there are different ways of doing things. I did a lot of work in restorative and community justice. Restorative justice comes out of the indigenous and the faith community and it's really quite honestly it's human nature, it's transformative human nature. So I've literally also slept on the gym floors or once in a police cell in Point Hope, but in these indigenous communities because it's important to also overnight in the community. My father was revered within the indigenous population and I've run into people who were named after him, their grandchildren were named after him. And part of that is because of an undying and unbreakable bond between my family, I should say my immediate family, my brothers and sisters and myself, and the people we have worked for and served for most of our adult lives, all of us. And so with that in mind, Breaking The Meta: Wow. Tom Begich: The relationships are strong. We're talking about a fifth of the Alaska population. 21 % of our under 21s are Alaska Native, burgeoning populations of youth, highly susceptible to sexual assault and abuse, highly susceptible to rape, missing and murdered indigenous children are a huge concern up here, and indigenous people in general, but of children in particular. These high rates of hepatitis, high rates of alcoholism, substance misuse, fentanyl, all of that is consuming our Alaska Native communities. So I spend a lot of time working with those communities because they're my communities as well. I've always believed that, always will. I'm highly supported by those very communities as well because I will take the time to just be present in a room when 13 elders have a story in itself. And that story might take two hours, it might take four. With the exception of having to go to the bathroom occasionally, I will stay there. It happened once, it a little long, you know. And they looked at me, they knew. But it's a unique world, you know. It's like being in Micronesia because you can't drive to most of these communities. You gotta fly. And in the wintertime we use the ice road. Yeah, we use the ice road, pick up a truck on a river. Breaking The Meta: Yep. Snowmobiles, yeah. Tom Begich: You know, these are things we do. If you're going to serve the communities in Alaska, whether they're 50 people or an Anchorage 290,000, you got to keep in mind that it's not easy. It's big. You know, my dad used to put a map over the map of the United States and go, Alaska's as big as Ketchikan at Charleston, South Carolina, Anchorage, somewhere right around, right around Topeka, Kansas. You could go to Lake of the Woods, Minnesota, and that'd be the Alvec or Barrow as it used to be called. Or you could go out to ADAC, which is about 200 miles to the west of Los Angeles. And that gives you the size and scope. of what I as a candidate and other candidates have to deal with if you want to get around the state. That was a long answer. I'm sorry. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Yeah. No, no, that's great. That's that is exactly what I was hoping for. ⁓ So as governor, one of your unique ⁓ jobs is to interact with the federal government. And we've got a very interesting federal government at the moment. And this particular federal government is also trying to do what I would consider a lot of horrible things to the to the wonderful wildlife and natural resources and just nature in general in the state of Alaska, how do you see yourself interacting with someone like this current administration for anyone in your state who's listening that is worried about what this administration is doing to the nature preserves and all the other stuff that they're looking to do to get all of this oil and all the other things that they're talking about doing? Tom Begich: You know, the first thing on first, anything that goes against the interests of Alaska, I get to fight and I will fight it tooth and nail. Just, just like Kevin Stitt is fighting in Oklahoma, the same administration when it's threatening his citizens. And I've seen that happen with a couple of Republican governors and with all so many Democratic governors who are fighting back and saying enough is enough. We're not going to tolerate this. When it comes to knowing how best to use Alaska resources, I'm going to use the power of the state to ensure we're backing communities up. And that means that if that means with, what is the word I'm looking for here, if that means withstanding the assault that happens when a federal government overreaches and tries to step into the world of Alaska, I'm going to do that. You know, they only think of us when they're not thinking of Greenland, because they think they can get everything easier and cheaper there and I get it you know and all the more power to them I mean that'll never happen but all the more power to them. The good news is this administration is only going to last two years and I believe that the country has seen the error of its ways and will replace this administration and we will quickly reestablish the protections over our over our pristine areas that we have. Where the state controls those lands they don't get Breaking The Meta: Mm. Tom Begich: to have a word or a say and I won't let them have a word or a say. We worked on and passed carbon credit bill up here and we recognize that that just kicks the can a little bit but we are going to take full advantage of that because it also means if we can lock down areas of the state from being like timber production and we can get carbon credits which is real income for folks so that they realize that their dependency doesn't need to be on the actual cutting and and destroying of the habitat and cutting and destroying of the crop, but in fact could be holding the crop so you can still subsistence hunt and fish, spotting grounds are affected, hunting grounds are affected. You know, if we can change our mentality as a state and we know that we're fighting to protect these things, that will translate in our fights to protect the areas that are under federal domination. We have a huge amount of land controlled by the federal government. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Tom Begich: We have to have a working relationship with the federal government. You may not be aware of this. I have a nephew that has my same last name that does not share my belief system and is our sole member of the United States House. So the other thing is we'll sit down at dinner and I'll make sure that those family dinners that he hears very clearly my perspective. And my mom, whose his grandma is Nana, is gonna read him the riot act if he continues to do things that destroy the pristine nature of our state. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Ha ha ha! Tom Begich: Every state goes through some level of development. We set aside areas that weren't necessary for that development, but that were essential for the future long-term ⁓ understanding of what climate is, what culture is, what our natural environment is for people. And this president has sought to develop some of those areas, but the areas he's seeking to develop are areas that don't have any of those resources really, or those resources are too costly to produce. And so in the end, you know, we had, let me give you an example. There was an attempt to sell some under the Biden administration to sell a couple oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And no one bid on them. I mean, we did. We bid on our own oil lease. We bid to buy our oil leases from ourselves, you know, but nobody else did. And the reason why is most major companies, in particular oil companies and oil and gas companies, they're all shifting. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Tom Begich: alternatives. BP isn't British Petroleum, hasn't been since early 2000s. That name is actually legally changed to Beyond Petroleum. And the reason they changed that name was because they have invested heavily in alternatives and renewables. So is Shell Oil. All these major companies, they sell their assets in places like Alaska because they're moving away from oil and gas. They got long-term projections. They got to take care of their shareholders. I got to take care of mine. I intend on fighting for my shareholders. and ensuring that if this administration, anything from taking our resources when we haven't agreed to it, or taking our folks who serve in the National Guard if we haven't agreed to it, I'm going to fight back. And there are number of ways we can do that. Breaking The Meta: So another thing that this administration was a part of that it passed around, I think it was June, July of last year was the big, beautiful bill, which is not what I usually call it when I'm not on camera. yeah, but some of the things that came from that, but also something that came before that, especially just recently is the loss of the ACA subsidies, change of SNAP benefits. Tom Begich: Yeah, there's another name for that, but... Breaking The Meta: There's going to be more changes to Medicare or Medicaid, I forget which, the end of Medicaid, towards the end of this year. How is that affecting the people of Alaska? And is there something that you hope to do to help protect and maybe to help protect the people of Alaska that are going to be suffering because of this bill until we get to a point where maybe as a federal government, we can fix that problem? Tom Begich: Medicaid, Medicaid. Yeah, you know, under the Biden administration, the Infrastructure Act and the affordable, you know, coming out of COVID brought in over $8 billion to the state. Now that is in excess of what we ⁓ have as a general operating budget of $6 billion. So, you know, and then this administration has rescinded by our actual account because it's all been hidden. But we've been able to identify a concrete $250 million that was pulled back. but we believe that it's closer to two billion based on what wasn't spent. so think about that, know, $2 billion in a state with a $6 billion general fund budget, that's a substantial amount, it's third. You know, it's huge. So we lost that. And what he gave us in exchange is he said, why don't I open the National Petroleum Reserve, which is federal, not state land. So our royalty on that is very, very low. And if you put that oil into our pipeline, Breaking The Meta: Mm. That's huge. Tom Begich: It actually reduces total royalties we get from the oil industry, which they love. We have no tax receipts that will come from that development until 2033 or 34. And we will give them tax credits for the development of that, even though they're not paying taxes. So when you think about that for a minute, that big, beautiful bill and then his gift to thank us for the rescission act is actually going to cost the state literally millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. So it's not a gift from this man. And that's one reason why I believe he's underwater in Alaska today, is people are very, very clear that money stopped coming in for vocational education that we had. We had money for retrofitting homes, for making them more energy efficient and making energy more affordable. Those were taken away. All of our subsidies that we were getting for renewables were taken away. We literally suffered. as a result of this administration. And I go back to my nephew, he was actually deciding vote in both bills. He passed by one vote in the House. Had he shifted his vote, they would have failed because of how close the House is. And that killed the bills. So when you think about that, this is really, really harmful. How do we make up for those changes that are coming in Medicaid? We're going to see anywhere from 20 to 40,000 Alaskans that are left without medical coverage. So I've talked about the need for us to become self-sustaining in as many ways and as many areas as we can. And one of those is medical. We have the largest veterans population per capita in the country. We have one of the largest indigenous populations per capita in the country, which means they have medical care. That means that the remaining citizens, if we expanded, ⁓ we provide medical care for young people up here. It's a state plan. It's called Denali Kid Care. It's very popular. I wanted to expand that to calling it something perhaps different than that, like just call it Denali Care for now. But what that would do is create a basically a safety net of health care to make it more affordable for in particular young people, but make it more affordable for folks who aren't otherwise covered by Medicare, Veterans Services or Indian Health Service. If you did that, then you can mitigate some of the 60 million annually it's going to cost us for medical care. and higher medical costs that we're going to be paying in hospitals, et cetera, because we don't have coverage. We already have seen the coverage go away in some of the ACA changes that were done by this administration because they forced Congress not to come to an agreement. So in terms of that issue, SNAP benefits, already were in trouble. We have bungled the ability for us to make SNAP payments completely. If you think the governor, president's pronouncements about Minnesota are dire, We make Minnesota look like ⁓ a gold star state in terms of getting benefits out, but we're working on it. And we have a very committed team at our department of health and social services that has seen the problem. In particular, our deputy commissioner, Emily Ritchie, to a similar extent, our commissioner, Heidi Edberg, have taken this on. And they're the current governor's appointees. But to be fair, they've taken it on. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Tom Begich: They are very concerned and they're doing the work that needs to be done to ensure SNAP benefits are getting to our most in need population. So as governor, I come from the background of mental health, of healthcare. That's gonna be a priority for me. And it's gonna be a priority because I come at it from not the industry perspective, but from the patient served perspective. And that's the way I'm gonna approach this. We haven't had a governor do that in my lifetime. So in that, by the way, I was born a year after statehood. Breaking The Meta: ⁓ wow. There you go. For anyone that has listened this far, has listened up to this point and heard everything that you and I have talked about, what are one or two things that no matter what you would hope that they come away knowing about you and your campaign? Tom Begich: I would say number one that my roots in this state are deep. My love for the state is deep. And my ideas for the state aren't about rehashing the past. It's about looking at what's going to work in the future. How will we make this in Alaska that is not just working for the people who live here now, but attracts people who are younger and interested in a future here? I didn't get a chance to talk about my goals to really enhance and turn Alaska into a lab. you know, for alternative energies and energy production. But I think we can be a model for the world about how you can get to affordable energy. We have a tough climate. We've tested things here before. We'll test that here. I think we can build a quality education system that ensures that Alaskans have a future in the world. I hope people walk away knowing that it's not just a pipe dream. It's actually possible. I think we can wean ourselves from fossil fuels. I hope people understand that. And that Alaska can lead being a state that produces from fossil fuel, can lead people down a road away from that dependency on that climate killing product. All these things in mind bring me to, you know, I know that I'll be able to govern this state well. I lead in the polls as it stands right now. I didn't mention that earlier, but it's true. And we have a chance to actually really transform Alaska, bring up another generation of leadership. Those are the things I want people to remember. Oh, and the website. www.tombagageforalaska.com spelled out. So there you go. Breaking The Meta: There you go. Tom, thank you so much for spending this time and letting us learn more about you and what you hope to do for the people of Alaska. I appreciate it. Tom Begich: Now, Michael, thanks for having me on. I very much appreciate it and I appreciate that you're doing this and all the work you're doing. Thank you. Breaking The Meta: Thank you. And for everyone that's listened and gotten this far, thank you so very much. Please like, subscribe, follow, hit all those buttons below. It not only helps me continue to do what I am trying to do, which is interview amazing people like Tom right here and help them get what we've always wanted, what we've been clamoring for for decades in some cases, accountability, breaking that status quo. Those are the kind of... Those are the kind of things that we need. Those are the kind of things we've been screaming about. The best way to do it, the best way to get people in Alaska to learn more about people like Tom is for all of us that are in the rest of the world to watch and share and like and get, get, just get involved, be involved in it because, you know, more people like Tom that get in office, it helps all of us in this country. So please do that. And also for those of you that don't know about this podcast. Breaking the Meta is about having hard conversations when necessary, fighting to break the status quo, and the idea that all people, no matter your race, religion, gender, or identity, get rights, respect, dignity, and safety. Again, thank you so much for being here, Tom, and we'll see everyone next time on Breaking the Meta. Bye, guys. Tom Begich: Thank you.