West County Democrats

Baskin Johns:  I already have one strike.  The second strike is Missouri.  I have to work for a year at a Bath and Body Works in Missouri and let my roots grow out.

Weekend Update, Saturday Night Live 3/10/19

I could hardly even believe Missouri was a real place.  It was one of those states, like Wyoming, that seemed improbable.  I knew it was called the “Show Me State.”  Its capitol was St. Louis.  I liked Meet Me In St. Louis.

Ugly by Mary Gordon (Yale Review 2016)

Making fun of Missouri is now acceptable sport.  It will get worse.

To start, as regular readers recall, Missouri Governor Mike Parson faces a billion dollar revenue gap in the new fiscal year starting July 1^st.  The result?  A pending budget crisis complete with more cuts to education, Medicaid and our state employees remaining the least paid in the country.

Still…

On the floor of the Missouri Senate, at least twice in one week senators called for the complete elimination of the corporate income tax without replacing that $300 million in revenue.

Several senators and representatives demand that every penny the state might gain from sales taxes collected on internet commerce be used to reduce the income tax rate.

An infomercial on YouTube breathlessly explains that Missouri’s accidental governor is “taking great leaps forward in tax cuts.”

Remember, even under the Hancock rules Missouri could collect another $4 billion a year in state-generated general revenue.  And, Missouri could access another billion dollars a year in federal funds via Medicaid expansion, more education and training support for food stamp families, and other good things.

Thursday night I listened to three of Missouri’s rarest breed, Democratic state legislators.   As one noted, this session’s class of 60 freshman has the power to fundamentally change the way the Capitol works.  But they won’t.  The Republican supermajority demands utter obedience.  To defy leadership means loss of a committee seat, or, support for a primary challenger:

For example, St. Louis County’s Republican Representative Shamed Dogan [Ballwin] recently tweeted, ”A vote to support President Trump’s emergency declaration is a vote for the next Democratic president’s emergency declaration on the Green New Deal.  Hope (Missouri’s senators will) vote to defend Congress’ authority against executive overreach.” 

[St. Louis Business Journal, Drebes, 3/15 – 21/19]

Though Dogan took the same position as Senator Roy Blunt, “Dogan’s standing on principle, but it could make him vulnerable to a primary challenge.”   

The Democrats reserved harsh words for two House bills.  House Bill 267, put forth by freshman Rep. Ben Baker (R – Neosho), encourages public schools to “Teach students knowledge of biblical content, characters, poetry and narratives that are prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture…”  Yes, publicly-funded Bible study.  And, HB 126 combined several currently illegal anti-abortion proposals into a stew “designed to be first in line at the United States Supreme Court” to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

By the way, to his credit, Representative Dogan did try to mitigate HB 267 by including a number of other core religious texts.  That amendment, of course, got voted down.

So, over the next couple of months expect Missouri to get spotlighted by the national media for its extreme legislation as well as a budget crisis.

We can’t expect to regain respectability until that day when the GOP establishment loses their hold on state government. 

Don’t hold your breath: recent polling showed 53% of all Missourians approve of Donald Trump’s presidency.  Maybe we can’t get there from here in our lifetimes.

Glenn