{"id":2609,"date":"2017-07-09T13:17:09","date_gmt":"2017-07-09T13:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westcountydemocrats.org\/?p=2609"},"modified":"2017-07-09T13:17:09","modified_gmt":"2017-07-09T13:17:09","slug":"legislative-update-july-10-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/?p=2609","title":{"rendered":"Legislative Update – July 10, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

West County Democrats<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Legislative Update<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

July 10, 2017<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Glenn Koenen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Federal Items:<\/strong><\/p>\n

While the media focuses on Presidential Tweets and Russian meddling, the Trump administration is quietly overturning established policies.\u00a0 Air and water pollution and work place discrimination become more acceptable every day.\u00a0 Student loan programs are melting.\u00a0 And, the worst is yet to come.<\/p>\n

Washington insiders don\u2019t see a path for a \u2018replacement\u2019 of \u201cObamacare\u201d to become law: it is possible that a majority of Republicans would vote to repeal the ACA without a replacement in the wings.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is expected to get many of the cuts to social programs included in the president\u2019s budget proposal.\u00a0 Medicaid and food stamps appear especially at risk.\u00a0 Missouri could see a 10% to 20% cut \u2013 more than $2 billion a year \u2013 in Medicaid support.\u00a0 Food stamps will probably require a state match, starting at 10% ($100 million a year) and growing to 25%.<\/p>\n

State Items:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Missouri ended Fiscal Year 2017 with a whimper.\u00a0 While overall General Revenue was up 2.6% (about 1.2% above the inflation rate), corporate tax revenue dropped by 7.1%.<\/p>\n

Most all of the bad things passed by the legislature, such as work place discrimination, were signed into law or allowed to take effect by the governor late on the Friday before the July 4th<\/sup>\u00a0Holiday.<\/p>\n

Gov. Greitens started the new fiscal year by taking away expenses he didn\u2019t want in the budget:<\/p>\n

\u25ba The Circuit Breaker for renters was cancelled.<\/p>\n

\u25ba Transportation money for schools was reduced.<\/p>\n

\u25ba The higher education allocation went back to the proposed 9% reduction.<\/p>\n

\u25ba Scheduled repairs to state buildings were cancelled.<\/p>\n

\u25ba Medicaid providers will get paid 1.5%\u00a0less<\/em>\u00a0per service than they received last month.<\/p>\n

In addition, the Department of Social Services, already on starvation rations, has been ordered to find $30 million in new \u201cefficiencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

More budget cuts to this year\u2019s budget will be needed.\u00a0 The state must offset revenue loss from the implementation of the 2014 tax cut and several other small revenue reductions.\u00a0 It is\u00a0very possible<\/em>\u00a0that Missouri will collect less money this fiscal year than it did last fiscal year.<\/p>\n

The current, second Special Session of the legislature is expected to run late into this month.\u00a0 The governor and some important GOP friends have expressed a desire for additional sessions, and, Senator Claire McCaskill has called for action on Prescription Drug Monitoring.\u00a0 The governor blames \u201ccareer politicians\u201d for \u201cnot doing their job\u201d during the regular session, thus making overtime necessary.<\/p>\n

The governor appointed a panel of Republicans to come up with a better taxation strategy: most of the draft report \u2013 which called for a state Earned Income Credit among other things \u2013 was disowned.<\/p>\n

For the legislative issues archives\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Submitted by Glenn Koenen, WCD Member<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

West County Democrats Legislative Update July 10, 2017 Federal Items: While the media focuses on Presidential Tweets and Russian meddling, the Trump administration is quietly overturning established policies.\u00a0 Air and water pollution and work place discrimination become more acceptable every Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29,2,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-driving-change","category-economic-fairness","category-wcd-info"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7ZWUT-G5","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2610,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609\/revisions\/2610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}