The Daily Signal - #400: Lt. Gov. Dan Forest Fights for Conservative Principles in North Carolina

Episode Date: February 19, 2019

On today’s podcast, we’re featuring an exclusive interview with North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest. He recently visited The Heritage Foundation while in Washington and spoke to us about how tax reform has changed his state, as well as his thoughts on the national political scene, including the left’s push for government-run health care and the Green New Deal.Also on today’s show:• Your letters to the editor. Next week your letter could be featured on our show; write us at [e-mail] or call 202-608-6205.• An uplifting story about the amazing rescue of a newborn baby in South Africa—and what it means for the sanctity of life.The Daily Signal podcast is available on the Ricochet Audio Network. You also can listen on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts.If you like what you hear, please leave a review or give us feedback. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, February 19th. I'm Rob Blewey, editor-in-chief. And I'm Rachel Dald Judas. Today, we're featuring our exclusive interview with North Carolina's lieutenant governor. His name is Dan Forrest, and he recently visited the Heritage Foundation, well in Washington. We'll also share some of your feedback on Rob's recent interview with Black Lives Matter activist, Hawk Newsome. And Michaela Stedman joins us later in the show to tell us about an amazing rescue of a newborn baby in South Africa.

Up next is Dan Forrest. Hello, this is Rob Louis for The Daily Signal. We're joined on today's show by North Carolina's lieutenant governor, Dan Forrest. A familiar face for the Daily Signal, and at our audience, it's good to be with you. Well, thank you guys for having me on. It's always great to be back at the Heritage Foundation, and a huge fan of the Daily Signal. It's part of my daily reading material. So thank you for everything you guys do.

Well, we appreciate that, and we appreciate the past interviews you've done with us and visiting Heritage today. I want to ask just to kick things off for our listeners. Tell us what's going on in North Carolina some of the issues that you're working on today. Well, you know, we're kicking back up our session again in North Carolina. And now is our long session. And we've been in Republican control down there for about eight years. And really what I tell people every day is kind of more of the same for us. We've turned our economy around.

We've gone from very high unemployment to very low unemployment. We have gone from very high taxation to very low taxation. And our economy is booming again. We're going to keep moving on those things. The difference this day is that we have a Republican legislature and a Democrat governor, and they have very different agendas. And it's going to be interesting to watch over the next eight or nine months or so how that plays out and what people's priorities are. So I'm sure we'll get into some detail about those priorities, but that's really what's on the scene right now. Yeah, well, obviously, you know, with President Trump, but touting the economy himself and some of the gains we've seen both in jobs and really across the board helping groups of all kinds, really achieve.

employment in ways that we haven't seen in a number of years. What are some of the things that you've seen work in North Carolina when it comes to getting people back to work and cutting taxes and doing things that really spur that growth? Well, tax reform primarily. A few years ago, we did comprehensive tax reform in North Carolina. We were the only state in America that was successful at it. There were 36 states that tried it. And when we did that, we ended up moving from 44th in the nation and business tax climate down to number 15 in one year. It was the largest leap in tax foundation history for business tax climate. We went all the way to number three in the nation on corporate tax climate.

And so we saw the economy immediately turn around. We saw people who were very skeptical of tax reform, who were saying the government's going to go out of business. We're not going to have any money for education. We're not going to have any money for health care. And we saw just the opposite happen. So we cut income tax on the corporate and personal side. We got personal income tax and you know what happened. the revenues with the state actually went up for personal income tax.

It was actually more money in the coffers, and we've been seeing surpluses year over year of $300 million to a half a billion dollars every single year since we did tax reform. And so the whole world knows that North Carolina is open for business. And we're creating about 6,000 jobs a month right now, and we've been rolling on that for a number of years. Well, today, Democrats release the Green New Deal that has been touted by the Democrat lawmaker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in this Green New Deal, and includes a provision that says it wants economic security for those who are unable or unwilling to work. What is your take of this legislation?

What's your take? Where do you think it should go? In the trash can is really where it should go. I mean, I think it speaks for itself. Just the words alone are so unbelievable in America today. But obviously, she has a following. I mean, she has more than just her district following her. She's kind of a rock star these days, and I get that.

But, you know, this is so anti-American in every way that, yeah, the trash can is about the only place for this legislation. One of the other issues that you're seeing Democrats in Washington push very aggressively is Medicare for all single-payer health care. Those of us on the conservative side and particularly at the Heritage Foundation believe those decisions should not be made in Washington but pushed down to states. So as somebody who is lieutenant governor of your state, what is your view about a conservative or a consumer-friendly health care policy? not one that's in the government's hands, obviously. I mean, try to find anything that the government runs that it really does efficiently. So health care is, you know, such a huge part of our economy that we've got to turn this thing around. We've got to do it the right way. In North Carolina, you know, obviously there's kind of a push that, you know, people are talking about that,

but we're still in charge of the legislature there. They're not interested in that. I know our new governor is going to be pushing Medicaid expansion in North Carolina. You know, a lot of, that interests a lot of people. You know, we need to make sure that we're doing the best we can to take care of the poor in our state. But, you know, first of all, I don't believe that Medicaid is good health care. It's really poor health care for poor people. We should be ashamed of ourselves that we're just making ourselves feel good by giving people poor health care. So I'm not a fan of Medicaid expansion. I'm a fan of doing it our way, kind of doing it the North Carolina way. So if we can grow it and provide good health care for

people along the way and not rely on the federal government, not have to play by the federal government's rules not to have to ask them for waivers, not to, you know, decide what's going to happen when they end up pulling funding away after a certain number of years. We need to do it our way, the North Carolina way, in a way that really does provide good health care for the people. As lieutenant governor of a state, what do you make of seeing other states like New York legalize abortion up to birth? Virginia pursued similar legislation. And the governor of Virginia Ralph Northam, he made comments that seem to say that he's comfortable with supporting and fantasy side. What do you make of all of this as a lieutenant governor yourself? Well, I think I make

the same thing of it that any human being would make of this. I think it's really just a lack of respect for human dignity is what we're seeing right now. You know, whether you're looking at kind of the Northam's blackface clan picture, that's a human dignity issue, right? If you're willing to do those things. But related to New York, it's probably the most egregious legislation that I've ever seen in my life. It's kind of the first piece of legislation that just really, really made me sad in America that human beings can literally think that they can kill a baby for convenience, for any reasons. They took all restrictions off of that. And that's really pretty sad to me. I think that personally, I think it's an overreach. I think that the left

has overreached on this. I think we all know statistically the vast majority of Americans don't believe in late-term abortion like this. And so, yeah, I'm hoping that the people wake up. I hope their eyes are open on this one. And they actually come out and stand strong. against this in the rest of the states across our country, even the federal government. This is a place for intervention to happen, even the Supreme Court. I know education is a priority issue for you. We recently celebrated National School Choice Week. What can you tell us about the state of affairs there in North Carolina?

Well, it's always a battle. You know, we've opened up charter schools in North Carolina. We lifted the cap on that. We've seen them grow exponentially. They're performing very well. Demographically across the board, they're more diverse than traditional public schools. That's always kind of an attack on charters. But ours in North Carolina are demographically very diverse and they're doing very well.

Some places aren't seeing the growth they'd like to see, but they're seeing better performance. And the one thing I can say about like charters specifically as far as choice goes is that in our state, if they're not performing, we shut them down. We can't do the same thing with poor traditional public schools, but why would we not give parents and students a choice to get an excellent education, opportunity scholarship? In North Carolina, it goes to the poorest of the poor student who's in a, if you have a parent who has a kid in a poor performing school and they're not providing. the education they need. They can take their dollars from the state and they can invest them in a private school. Why would we say no to that? You know, that that's kind of blows my mind, but there's a lot of people that really do say no to that concept. You tweeted near the end of January that legislation in your state was filed to ban female general mutilation. What's next for that and what's

your hope for this down the road as it goes through committee? Well, my hope is that it passes. I think it's bipartisan. I haven't heard anybody that disagrees with this. You know, the federal government had it in their purview. A judge, I think a federal judge rightly took it out of the federal government's hands and placed it back into the state, but it left a big gap there. So there's states that aren't addressing this issue. We know it's very harmful to young girls specifically. And it's a cultural issue. It's not a religious issue. A lot of people say, well, isn't this a religious preference? And there's nowhere in the world that this is a religious issue. This is a cultural issue. And we just don't want it to come to North Carolina. So we're really trying to fill that gap that the federal government left wide open. And other states have done that too. And I think this will sail through. So many states have seen the negative impact of illegal immigration, whether it's drugs coming across the border and the opioid crisis that we're dealing with. How has it affected North Carolina in your view? Well, I'd say it's affected North Carolina the same way it affects anywhere, right? I mean, I think it is a national crisis in America. I think we have to deal with it.

I think we've seen Congress kick the can down the road way too long on this issue. My gut would be that if you could get together any 10 people, reasonable people, in a room at any time without the politics, you could probably solve this pretty quickly. I think the president was right. We need a wall, and that wall should have a big, beautiful door in it, I think, was his term. And, you know, really what he means by that is, you know, we should give people IDs when they come to the border. We should know who's coming in our country and who's going out of our country and how long they're here. And we should make sure we have the workforce we need and the workforce that our agriculture, we're a big agriculture state in North Carolina.

and we need the workforce there. We need workforce for construction because, you know, our state's growing tremendously. These people need to find workers. But we also need to make sure that wages aren't suppressed in doing that, that American wages are being driven up because of the lack of illegal immigration. So people can make a real living as Americans as well, right? And so we need a fairness in that. And the wall will provide that, I believe.

I mean, I think once you build the wall and you're secure, then you can determine what do you do with identification at that point. I mean, we can give everybody some form of ID. At that point, we know who they are. We can, you know, manage the coming and going of people in our country, and that's the way it should be. I'm curious. How was Hurricane Florence recovery going in your state? I was there a couple months ago talking with Samaritan's purse, and they were helping people recover. It's just amazing to see I was down there a few months ago.

The loss of life and several people died as well as hundreds of thousands of homes that were damaged. How is that going? and what is the trajectory looking like for how much time you guys have left to recover? How long do you think it will take? Wow, that's such a great question. We haven't recovered from Matthew prior to Florence. You know, there were hundreds of millions of dollars that were left on the table and homes weren't being rebuilt in North Carolina.

I think it's kind of a travesty down there that this money's been left on the table. I worked with Samaritan's purse as well. I took my staff down there and we did some work in New Bern. It was devastating to our state. It's one of those hurricanes. it's a flood event, and you can't really see the damage. So I flew over the state in a helicopter for hours, and there were just hundreds of square miles underwater

that have never been flooded before. So these people don't have insurance. Didn't have flood insurance. You didn't need it. You know, you've never been underwater. And so there are people that have been devastated. Their lives have been devastated. And, you know, South Carolina had a much better plan than North Carolina,

the way that they had worked with, especially with the federal government, worked with FEMA to have all their paperwork together so they could recover quickly. From Matthew, they had built, I think, a thousand homes before. we had built one. And so the system was broken in North Carolina. I'm hoping we get it fixed soon. But this is, I think, to answer your question directly, it's going to be a long-term recovery. We have one of the best emergency management teams in the country. They're really phenomenal. The recovery process is broken. And finally, I want to ask the question about communicating conservative principles, those

things that we hold so dear. As you're talking to constituents, what advice do you have for people who are listening or others who are in a role like that in terms of, making sure that those ideas really connect and resonate with people. Well, I think they're the ideas that made America great. It's not something we should walk around apologizing for. You know, there's no reason to, you know, tuck your tail and walk around and say, I'm a conservative. These are the things that give people individual freedom.

They give them economic freedom. They're free market ideas or the things that have improved the world, you know, a thousand times over over the last couple hundred years. And America has really charted the course for that. It's because of these American ideals that we have gotten to where we are. So to see that, you know, start to make this U-turn and head back in the other direction is kind of disturbing. So I don't think we need to be apologetic about it. I think we need to share our message, but we need to be able to convince people as to why it's the best message.

And I think we need to do that in story form. You know, I think our opponents are really good at telling emotionally connecting stories with these facts. We're good about talking about facts and facts don't connect. So we need to make sure that we're connecting the true stories about people's lives with the facts so that people can understand the real impact they have, not just here in America, but around the world. Well, I certainly endorse that advice. We try to do it every day at the Daily Signal. You do a great job of it. Well, thank you. Lieutenant Governor Dan Forrest, thanks for visiting Heritage in the Daily Signal. Thanks for having me on. Are you looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues? Sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda.

Each Tuesday in the agenda, you will learn what issues Heritage Scholars on Capitol Hill are working on, what position conservatives are taking and links to our in-depth research. The agenda also provides information on important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online as well as media interviews from our experts. Sign up for the agenda on heritage.org today. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. We certainly received quite a few about Hawk Newsom, the Black Lives Matter activist that we featured on the show earlier this month.

Well, we can't read them all. We wanted to share a few with you today. We'll start with Kathleen Anderson of Walla Walla Washington. Thank you so much for the interview with Hawk Newsom. We can't be afraid to listen and talk. Regular media won't do it. They need to have the deck stacked. I appreciate hearing this young man.

He needs to be heard. Please do follow-ups. We certainly will, Catherine. Up next is John Olofson, who writes, this is the kind of work that the Heritage Foundation should be doing a lot more of. I think we all know black Americans have been used by the Democrats for far too long. Heritage should also be working with President Trump, who gets it, to help them. Your letter could be featured on next week's show.

Send an email to Letters at DailySignal.com or leave a voicemail message at 202-608-6205. Do you own an Alexa? You can now get the Daily Signal podcast every day as part of your daily flash-referral. It's easy to do. Just open up your Alexa app, go to settings, and select Flash Briefing. From there, you can search for the Daily Signal podcast and add it to your Flash briefing so you can stay up to date with the top news of the day that the liberal media isn't covering. We're joined in our studio by Michaela Stedman, who has a story from a faraway country, but is certainly just as inspirational. Michaela, tell us about it. My pleasure, Rob. Probably the last thing paramedics expected to find in a storm drain last week was a newborn baby. And yet, that is exactly what they found after local residents in South Africa reported that they heard the infant crying in the drain. The paramedics rescue the child after spending four hours in the storm drain with a hammer and chisel.

There's a video of this rescue that is just incredible. We'll play the audio here in just a second. You can hear the baby crying just before she was lifted out of the drain and handed up to the medics. That community you heard cheering out. actually got to name the baby, Gabriella, and she was taken to the hospital immediately. While she was very cold and scraped up, she will fully recover. That's an amazing story, Michaela. And wow, that video is powerful.

We'll make sure to post that in our show notes for anybody who wants to see it. Why did you pick this one? You know, Rob, while this happened in South Africa, I think it's really applicable to the conversation that we're seeing going on right now here in America about abortion. Right now, we're seeing laws presented that allow. for the abortion of babies all the way up through birth. And these babies are not much younger than Gabriella, who was only between one and three days old when she was rescued.

And I think the story was powerful because it showed a community coming together to save this one child's life. And I hope that we get to see America doing the same to defend both the unborn and born because every life matters no matter where they came from. Thank you, Michaela. I wholeheartedly agree on that. And Rachel, you've been covering actually some legislation in the U.S. Congress. Senator Ben Sass hopes to soon have a vote on.

Yeah, they're going to hold a roll call vote on legislation that would protect babies born alive during an abortion. We'll see where this goes. I think it's supposed to be on the 25th. So stay tuned. We'll be covering it. Well, thank you. We're going to leave it there for today. The Daily Signal podcast is broadcast from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation.

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