Republican State Senator Jim Hendren, didn’t like how Conduit for Commerce and two other conservative organizations scored his liberal votes, so he created his own scorecard (grading his own paper).
The results of the CFC scorecard and other conservative scorecards should not have been any surprise to him since he spent the 2017 legislative session pushing his uncle’s progressive big government agenda. His uncle is Governor Asa Hutchinson.
Senator Jim Hendren claims to be a leader. Unfortunately, he led several Republican legislators to forgo their conservative roots to please Jim and his uncle.
We assume the reason Hendren came up with the idea of a creating his own scorecard is ….. because of unhappy Senators who followed him and his uncle instead of the Republican Principles and Platform and who are now under fire from Republicans back home.
If Senator Jim Hendren wanted a higher conservative rating perhaps he should NOT have:
- Voted FOR SB140 the Internet Sales Tax to take more money out of the pockets of Arkansas Families. (Fortunately, the House of Representatives stopped this bad bill.)
- Voted FOR HB1267 which imposed the special tax on mounting new and used tires to be used to grow another government program.
- Voted FOR SB120 which included a $5.9 million a year increase on Arkansans using a tax credit for military retirees as an excuse to raise taxes. (There was another bill to provide the tax credit without raising our tax burden.)
- Voted AGAINST SB175 which would have required Medicaid providers to disclose doing business with elected officials. (The bill failed.)
- Voted AGAINST SB512 to reduce regulations with a standard of repealing one regulation for every new regulation. (The bill failed.)
- Voted FOR SB373 to weaken the Freedom of Information Act by exempting information in the hands of an attorney for the government. (The bill failed.)
- Voted FOR SB5 which robbed the Tobacco Settlement Fund to move the funds to the Long-Term Reserve Fund (previously called Rainy Day Fund) that the Governor may spend just with the approval of only one legislative committee.
- Voted FOR SB688 which provided corporate welfare for Big River Steel to compete with an existing Arkansas steel mill and to paid by Arkansas taxpayers.
And the list goes on and on……
Senator Hendren should just be glad the scorecard only included 2017 legislation and did not include his:
- SB96 of 2015 which Hendren CLAIMED ended Obamacare Medicaid Expansion but it didn’t move the scheduled end ahead by even one day, and instead HELPED CONTINUE Obamacare Medicaid Expansion by giving a task force the duty to recommend how to continue coverage of Obamacare Medicaid Expansion.
- SB1 of Second Extraordinary Session 2016 which STOPPED the automatic termination of Arkansas’ Obamacare Medicaid Expansion under a 2013 law and CONTINUED it under the name Arkansas Works.
- SB343 of 2015 in which the title of Hendren’s bill was a lie. Instead of stopping authorization for a state-based Obamacare Exchange as clearly stated in the title, his legislation allowed the authorization to continue.
