The phrase “for the children” has entered the realm of parody in our popular culture. We smile knowingly when in films and TV comedies a sleazy scamster uses the “for the children” plea to manipulate emotions and disguise self-interest. Nevertheless, cynical comedy aside, we all also know on some deep level that this comedic trope only works because the welfare of children is really, truly paramount – so much so that our concern becomes easy to exploit.

The Missouri legislature, however, has had a different take. Here, for the past few years at least, “for the children” has meant doing your bit to protect fetal life, living children be dammed. The last chair of the House Standing Committee on Children and Families, Rep. Cynthia Davis, was up-front about her anti-abortion priorities. Fortunately, the term-limited Davis is now history, and it’s possible that the new committee leadership may be willing to consider engaging  with the needs of Missouri’s real, fully-developed children.

And not a moment too soon. As a recent series of reports in the St. Louis Post Dispatch make clear, Missouri’s under-regulated child daycare system could use some TLC from the committee. The series, which explores the issues surrounding the accidental deaths of more than 40 children in unlicensed daycare settings in Missouri over a relatively short span of time, exposes a lax system with little accountability. Sadly, past efforts to correct these failings have been opposed by conservatives who, while children are dying, argue that efforts to regulate providers are too intrusive.

At least partly in response to the Post Dispatch reports, the House Standing Children and Families Committee has scheduled hearings to guide corrective actions. If the hearing that took place in Kansas City recently is indicative, according to committee member Rep. Jeanette Mott-Oxford (D-59), there may be some hope for improvement.

Given the clear evidence of the need to update daycare regulations, two bills that have failed several times in the past, known popularly as Nathan’s Law and Sam Pratt’s Law, might possibly make it through the legislature. Among other provisions, these bills would address the ratio of children to caregivers, and permit the State to investigate and shut-down unlicensed daycare providers who are facing criminal charges.

Senator Scott Rupp (R-2) has combined the two into one bill, SB 339. When it comes to child care at least, Rupp seems to march to a different drummer than his GOP primary opponent, Cynthia Davis, who was instrumental in obstructing passage of Sam Pratt’s law, named for a child who died while in daycare. Davis is notorious for her statement that it was “a ‘souvenir’ bill designed to soothe his grieving family.” In contrast, Rupp states that:

I want Missouri parents to be certain that when they go to work or attend to personal business, their children are in the best hands possible.

Welcome as these changes might be, they would, however, only begin to scratch the surface of Missouri’s child care needs. As Mott-Oxford reports, the evidence is clear that ensuring quality child care will require more than just tightening standards for daycare providers.

Prior to the Kansas City hearing, Mott-Oxford and her committee colleagues boarded the Operation Breakthrough “City You Never See” bus tour. Operation Breakthrough is a non-profit Early Head Start/Head Start organization that has been helping meet the child care needs of low-income, working Kansas Citians since 1971. The bus tour provides an educational opportunity that enables participants to learn about the lives of families in areas of the city where “children stand in line for food, where working parents desperate for shelter break into abandoned buildings, where Missouri babies born into poverty struggle to survive.”

As you might imagine, the stories our legislators heard on the bus tour offered powerful testimony to the fact that Missouri not only needs to make child care safer, but must also insure that quality day care, tailored to meet the developmental needs of its clients, is more widely accessible.  Mott-Oxford suggests four legislative actions that she believes would achieve that goal:

First: Expand eligibility requirements for child care assistance.  The sate currently offers subsidies to working parents who are at or below 127% of the federal poverty level; the national average for such assistance is 185% of the poverty level. Mott-Oxford advocates for revising the way we determine the poverty level. She points out that we use a measure developed in the 1950s and 60s that is based on the cost of food; 60 years later, such a measure is no longer realistic as other expenses, housing and health care, for instance, stand in a different ratio to the cost of food than they did in the past.

Second: Reimburse child care providers at the market rate. We all know that we only get what we pay for, and we can’t expect to get good child care providers for a pittance.

Third: Offer support to day care providers to enable them to obtain training that will, in turn, allow them to offer a better product, one that will merit higher pay.

Fourth: Fund outreach to increase participation in the Parents as Teachers program.  

Mott-Oxford’s H.B. 583, which was introduced last session, would have addressed the last three points; sadly it didn’t survive the session. We can only hope that the time has finally come when Missouri’s lawmakers will be willing to address the welfare of its most vulnerable citizens. In Missouri 212,369 children live in poverty. As the Operation Breakthrough Webpage eloquently notes:

These children are full of potential. With the right start they can absolutely become the fireman who comes to the rescue, the chef who feeds the town, the lawyer who fights for what is right or the doctor who saves the day. They can be contributors to the community.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that serving the potential of these children will cost money – money that the state does not have and will not have as long as the legislature will not address the issue of revenue.  In the next few weeks, I hope to write in greater detail about the related issues of poverty and taxation in Missouri.

Jerry Ford at Missourians for Tax Justice sent out to the members of the group this account of doings in the House last week:

Where’s your money going?

For starters, the Senate debated a bill that would give $500 to $800 Million ($40 Million a year for 22 years) in tax credits to a French/Canadian airplane manufacturer who wants to locate in St. Joe!!

Any discretionary moneys over those years would probably be gobbled up .. forget education, mental health, public safety, medical care, etc. They needed our hero, Jeanette Oxford’s amendment in the House on HJR 70.

While the Senate was giving all our money away, the House was limiting Legislatures from making spending determinations on vital needs in the future by taking away certain future revenues from the table. And then came Jeanette with a great amendment. In essence it said, “Let’s just agree that Missouri should always remain at the bottom of the country for services to its citizens!” While she was shouted down by the Republicans in the Chamber, her stock rose dramatically in the Halls!

She may not know it, but she’s being noticed by lobbyists, pundits, reporters, etc. around the building as someone not to be taken lightly. Her cries from the wilderness are beginning to be heard.

……….

Representative Oxford offered House Amendment No. 1.

AMEND House Committee Substitute for House Joint Resolution No. 70, Page 1, Section 23(a), Line 1, by inserting after “23(a). 1.” the following:

“It is the goal of the state of Missouri to fund education, public safety, and vital services to our citizens at a level below that of most other states, so that Missouri will never be among the top tier of states for public investment in education, public safety, and vital services to our citizens.”; and

Further amend said title, enacting clause and intersectional references accordingly.

Representative Oxford moved that House Amendment No. 1 be adopted.

Which motion was defeated.

Although the motion was officially defeated, it will be acted on in practice–but perhaps Jeanette is less than happy to get her way after all.

Anyway, it’s unusual to see Mott-Oxford speaking for the Republicans better than they could do it themselves.  

Before the lege’s spring break, Republicans tried to pass Pervez Jane Cunningham‘s bill to put a constitutional amendment on the fall ballot forbidding judges from raising taxes without voter approval–as if a Missouri judge ever had. Too many people had left early on Thursday for the spring break, so the Rs had to wait. They got the bill through the House this week.

Republican behavior both times was of a piece. On the Tuesday before the break, first round approval was considered:

After about 10 minutes of debate, Speaker Pro Tem Bryan Pratt, R-Blue Springs, called for closing remarks from Cunningham, even though several Democrats were standing and Rep. J.C. Kuessner, D-Eminence, says he was waving his hand, asking to speak.

For his part, Pratt said: “Nobody was seeking recognition. There wasn’t a single hand in the air.”

That statement was only part of the lying Pratt did. Jeanette Mott-Oxford wrote that:

Although the “no” votes clearly were louder than the “yes” votes, Pratt nonetheless declared the measure had won first-round approval.

This week, GOP legislators abandoned bald-faced lying in favor of what they had said they would eschew this session: PQ (moving the Previous Question to cut off debate). Again, they left several Democrats waiting in line at the mike, this time passing the bill–but with only the minimum number of yes votes.

Cunningham’s been a busy little beaver. Wednesday night, in the capitol rotunda, she and her guest, actor-producer Ben Stein, showed a film about intelligent design. Their point was that universities are shunning intellectual diversity if they refuse to teach intelligent design. Maybe Cunningham and Stein have a point. Perhaps while the universities are at it, they should also question whether the earth is round and rotates around the sun.

In any case, Cunningham sees no irony in cutting off debate on the bill while pleading for more debate in universities.

Mott-Oxford is understandably annoyed at having been left standing at the mike:

   Since the GOP has once again cut off debate with Democrats standing at the mikes ready to speak on a bill (and an important one that calls for amending our constitution at that), I thought I’d share with you what I wanted to say if I’d had the opportunity to speak before the PQ:

   1) What’s happened to the quality of work in this Legisalture? Last year’s crash and burn mess around the economic development bill had many editors speculating that it’s time to get rid of term limits down here because clearly unskilled novices are in charge. This is yet another example as Rep. Jane Cunningham and GOP-supporters constantly said “There are some problems with the language of this bill, but we’ll fix it on the Senate side. Trust us!” Whatever happened to getting it right the first time?

   2) The real agenda behind this bill is clear if you read Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, a respected book that was honored in recent years as one of the best examples of investigative reporting. I think the author is Michelle Goldman. The chapter on the courts spells out how groups with a radical theocratic agenda are working a coordinated plan to muzzle the courts until they can take over the courts.They are currently training students with the intent of moving them into positions as the legislators, judges, and Supreme Court justices of tomorrow. (Some of the groups involved – trusting my memory here since the book is on the table by my bed in St. Louis – are Generation Joshua, Focus on the Family, Jerry Fallwell’s organization, and Patrick Henry University.)

   Interestingly enough, numerous pieces of Rep. Cunningham’s legislative package (and that of other GOP sponsors) are profiled in other chapters of the book – like intelligent design (for which Cunningham honored Ben Stein and his movie that was shown in the Rotunda yesterday!) and the “intellectual diversity bill.” Many of her bills, including those that undermine public education, are based on model legislation in the christian nationalist playbook.This coalition of theocrats would re-write US history and initiate a government based on their religious and political doctrine, clearly violating the religious freedom clause of the Bill of Rights established by our nation’s founders (and clearly in contradiction to what many other christians believe as well).

   Hopefully HJR 41 WILL be fixed in the Senate – fixed by killing it dead as a doornail.

If Democrats gain quite a few seats next election without taking either house outright, some are bemoaning the gridlock that will result from a (barely) Republican legislature and a (presumably) Democratic governor. Yes, effective governance would be put off for another day two years. On the other hand, holding a bare majority might make it harder for Republicans to railroad through crap like HJR 41: always look for the silver lining.

Rep. Jeanette Mott-Oxford, in a newsletter, reminds us of the Native American proverb:  The Earth does not belong to us. We borrow it from our children.  With that and global warming in mind, she offered these tips about not wasting energy in the winter:

Here are some tips that I gathered from the Earth 911 website:

– In the winter, turn your thermostats down to 68 degrees or lower. Reduce the setting to 55 degrees before going to sleep or when leaving for the
day. (For each one degree you turn down the thermostat in the winter, you’ll save up to five % on your heating costs.)

– Turn off and un-plug non-essential lights and appliances. The electricity generated by fossil fuels for a single home puts more carbon dioxide into the air than two average automobiles!

– Buy ENERGY STAR appliances, products and lights. ENERGY STAR® is a program of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designed to help consumers identify
energy-efficient appliances and products.

– Clean or replace filters on furnaces once a month or as recommended for the model you are using.

– Clean warm-air registers, baseboard heaters, and radiators as needed; make sure furniture, carpeting, or drapes do not block them.

– Bleed trapped air from hot-water radiators once or twice a season; if in doubt about how to perform this task, call a professional.

– Place heat-resistant radiator reflectors between exterior walls and the radiators.

– Use kitchen, bath, and other ventilating fans wisely; in just one hour, these fans can pull out a houseful of warmed (or cooled) air. Turn fans
off as soon as they have done the job.

– During the heating season, keep the draperies and shades on your south-facing windows open during the day to allow sunlight to enter your
home and closed at night to reduce the chill from cold windows.

– Finally, in winter close an unoccupied room that is isolated from the rest of the house, and turn down the thermostat or turn off the heating
for that room or zone. However, do not turn the heating off if it adversely affects the rest of your system. For example, if you heat your house with a heat pump, do not close the vents – closing the vents could harm the heat pump.