Missouri Republican politicians put the squeeze on middle class and working taxpayers all the time – just consider their reckless tax cut for the rich, a taxcut that will decimate Missouri’s coffers with little benefit for the ordinary Joe. They’re willing to risk tax dollars any old day when it comes to serving their rich patrons or pandering to their base – here you can reflect on the potential costly court cases that will result if Brian Nieves’ gun law nullification bill manages to squeak through. Or think about the beaucoup bucks that will be spent paying for ID cards and other nonsense if Republicans manage to get their way about voter ID – money spent to solve an imaginary problem (although the actual problem Republicans hope to address – voting Democrats – may not be so imaginary).  

By far the worst example of such waste can be found in the GOP’s to-the-death opposition to the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. You know that by refusing to expand Medicaid they’re not only depriving poor Missourians of health insurance that will, for many, be a matter of life and death, but they’re depriving the state of billions in federal Medicaid support. You also know that failing to expand Medicaid will cost the state many potential new jobs in the health sector. Hospitals will also bear the cost of the GOP Obamacare tantrum when they have to continue to treat the uninsured who don’t qualify for either Missouri Medicaid or the Obamacare exchanges in their emergency room, but with considerably smaller federal subsidies to do so. Many might actually be forced to close.

But these costs are all old news. There’s yet another potential strain on the state budget, if Republicans remain obdurate. Obamacare’s coverage mandate along with the publicity about insurance coverage has led many previously uninsured people who are eligible for Medicaid to sign up for coverage, people that Wonkblog’s Jason Millman identifies as “woodwork enrollees,” as in folks coming out of the woodwork. So how does this potentially strain Missouri’s budget? Here’s how:

From a state budget perspective, there’s an important difference between the woodwork population and those newly eligible under the Medicaid expansion. Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government pays 100 percent of the costs for the Medicaid expansion population through the end of 2016, with the state share gradually increasing to no more than 10 percent. New woodwork enrollees are funded under the traditional Medicaid structure, in which the federal government on average pays 57 percent of the cost – though the federal share varies by state.

In Missouri the actual percentage paid by the state is 64% so the cost will be higher than average, although Millman speculates that fewer folks may come forward in states that don’t have their own exchanges since there’s been less healthcare outreach push to enroll the citizens of in those states. Millman goes on to say that:    

States knew the woodwork effect was coming and had time to prepare for it, since the ACA was passed more than four years ago. The big question is just how accurately were they able to predict its impact.

Except, of course, states like Missouri which is run by Republicans equipped with ideological and partisan blinders. It’s doubtful whether our feckless leaders could manage to plan their way out of a paper bag, much less plan for increased Medicaid enrollment – especially without the increased federal subsidy. These are, after all, the tax-cutting imbeciles who ignored all the contrary evidence and cost the state budget somewhere between $600 to 800 million dollars and $4.8 billion dollars yearly, depending on who you believe.  

Yesterday Missouri’s GOP engineered the passage of a draconian tax cut for wealthy Missourians. The justification? To promote growth.

Today the Los Angeles Times cites new research from the University of Wisconsin that radical taxcutting and similar “pro-business policies don’t really contribute to economic growth. They just make the rich richer, which is not the same thing at all.” Read the details here and weep. Of course, if you’re ready for the unabridged version, you can always purchase a copy of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century and get the same message with massively more data to support the conclusions.

Two voter ID bills introduced in the Missouri House, HB1073 and HJR47, designed by Republicans to limit voting access by Democratic leaning citizens, have advanced to the Senate where Republicans, who are all hot and bothered by non-existent voter fraud, are very likely to send them on to the Governor for what is just as likely to be another veto.

However, as Henry Waters III notes in the Columbia Tribune, judges in Arkansas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have found similar voter ID laws unconstitutional on the grounds that “Photo ID laws are an interference with voters’ rights not warranted as protection against voter fraud.” Doesn’t deter our lawmakers from pressing on though. Missouri may be the show-me state, but it’s awful hard to show folks something if they aren’t capable of drawing the right conclusions from the display.

Both the Missouri House and Senate have okayed similar legislation that attempts to nullify federal gun laws (but only, as Brian Nieves insists, the unconstitutional laws), punish federal agents that attempt to enforce those laws, and permit open carry – even in jurisdictions that want to prohibit the open display of guns by armed yahoos.

Guess what? Sane folks know that state lawmakers don’t get to decide which federal laws are unconstitutional and if the final bill survives a guaranteed veto by the Governor, it’ll head straight for the courts – and cost Missouri a bundle in the process. In the District Of Columbia v. Heller decision of 2008, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the 2nd amendment permits the regulation of firearms – a point articulated by even the über conservative activist judge, Antonin Scalia . On a more immediate level, the mayors of St. Louis and Kansas City are concerned about the potential of this law to endanger cooperative federal and state task forces working to combat gang and gun violence. As for open carry, apart from the disrespect the law shows for local self-determination, the oft-stated rationale, that more guns means less crime, has been shown to be essentially false.

Have you noticed a pattern here?  The Republicans who mostly run our state spend lots of time legislating from perspectives that can’t stand the the test of fact-based reality. The result? Counter-productive, costly, and even unconstitutional laws that have the potential to seriously harm Missourians, destabilize our civic and social life, and debase our democratic institutions. The folks who stand to gain? Members of the state’s oligarchy with money to burn and the politicians who want to help them burn it. Each of the examples above either constitutes a direct giveaway to Republican political patrons, or are useful in either directly (voter ID) or indirectly (pandering to gun-related paranoia) securing Republican power. We’re governed by power-mad, corrupt (what happened to those ethics bills?) fantasists. As a result we’re left to cope with what promises to be a consistently deteriorating reality.  

On the topic of SB509 and the legislature’s override of Governor Nixon’s veto, I endorse what Michael Bersin said. Ditto what Blue Girl said. In my own words: yesterday GOP dimwits (and one Democrat turncoat) voted to deprive a low-tax, low-service state and its vulnerable citizens of vital revenue; they did it because they’re retrograde ideologues or because they’re so well paid by folks like billionaire Rex Sinquefield that they just don’t care about the consequences for the rest of us.

It’s true that Republicans are mainly to blame for a tax policy that will ensure decades of mediocrity and worse for Missouri, but they’ve haven’t tried to hide their druthers and the folks who put them in office probably deserve what they get. But that doesn’t hold true for the rest of us, particularly the rank-and-file Democrats who voted for Rep. Keith English (D-68), the lone Democrat to vote for SB509 and, hence, the guy who tied the bow on the legislature’s gift to Sinquefield and other wealthy Missourians. English, a union electrician tried to claim the high ground:

“I have many co-workers within the electrical industry, residents in my district, they’re looking for jobs,” English said. If not a tax cut, “I don’t know what else in the near future we can do to get the state moving.”

Just like cutting taxes got Kansas moving:

Last week, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Kansas’ credit rating, noting its sluggish economic recovery compared with other states. Kansas revenues declined in April. Among other things, Moody’s said the income tax cuts were putting pressure on the budget and creating risk for the state’s financial future.

English either didn’t read the Governor’s well-reasoned veto statement attentively or he can’t process complex reasoning very well since he evidently believes that the Governor must have had a perverse desire to stifle SB509’s magical economic benefits which led him to lie about the bill’s flaws provisions:

“The governor told us things about it that, after doing my homework, are not 100 percent true,” English said. “We have to generate a ton of money before those triggers happen.”

Too bad English didn’t work a little harder at his research. As the non-partisan Missouri Budget Project pointed out:

Although supporters of SB509’s tax scheme maintain that the so-called “trigger” would protect education and other services, the trigger is just a smokescreen. State revenue needs to grow by around $250 million each year just to keep up with current services. Moreover, because the trigger fails to account for already depleted services, recession-era cuts will become Missouri’s new normal. That will make it even harder for us to compete as other states invest in their infrastructure and education needs. SB 509’s triggers would have even allowed tax cuts to go into effect during the midst of the last recession.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorialist suggests that maybe English’s motives weren’t totally disinterested:

Mr. English, a wiry wireman from IBEW Local 1, is getting a lot of attention for betraying his party, his union supporters and his working-class North County constituents. Nonetheless, the bet here is that he won’t have any trouble raising money for re-election this fall.

So English sold us out or he’s just butt-stupid. Doesn’t make much difference which. Every Democrat in the state needs to make sure that nobody forgets what English did when election time rolls around. Even if it means that the seat goes to a Republican. What he did is that bad.

The other thing that everyone who is either raging or in mourning for Missouri’s lost future can do is send a donation today to the state Democratic party. The real Democrats deserve our support.

 In case you wondered what Missouri Republican legislators are currently cooking up, they are starting impeachment hearings against the Governor. They think that if they set off some big rhetorical fireworks, reality-challenged Missourians (a.k.a., the Republian base) might be susceptible to becoming so riled up about the Governor’s efforts to take care of business that they’ll show their appreciation come election time.

If you want more background read the earlier post by Blue Girl, (“When ideology overtakes governing”). After doing so, you’ll be in a good position to appreciate Rep. Mike Moon’s (R-157) effort at wit when he attempted to defend the risible GOP project:

Moon says the Governor has called the impeachment resolutions “stunts.”   But he says,  “I  guarantee you I’m no Evel Knievel,” referring to the famous motorcycle stunt rider.

Rep. Moon is right that there are some differences beetween the famous stuntman and the state’s GOP lawmakers – although the difference might have to do with something other than performing stunts. Evel Kneivel, who attempted to jump motorcycles over strings of trucks, canyons and other lethal spaces, had to know something about what he was doing in order to avoid going terminally splat. Can we say the same thing about the Republican contingent in Jefferson City? Is it possible that these folks don’t have a clue? For example, the latest evidence that we are represented by buffoons pulling one mindless stunt after another is the current manifestation of the GOP’s ongoing preoccupation with cutting the taxes of the wealthy, SB509:

Nixon says lawmakers might have intended to lower the income tax at the top level.  But what they did to is eliminate state income taxes on incomes of more than $8,000.   He maintains the wording is clear. “Senate Bill 509 says that once this legislation is fully phased in, the top bracket ‘shall be eliminated,'” he says. “The result of this provision is to wipe out 97% of all individual income tax collections in the state of Missouri.”

Nixon’s got expert opinion on his side and the GOP have got an retired Missouri* Supreme Court judge who disagrees. So how do the intellectual giants in the lege come down on the topic? According to Senate floor leader Ron Richard, “we got one learned man who says it’s not an issue; one learned man who says it is. So what do you do?  You take your best shot and try to deal with what you think is your best interest.”  

Does that mean that Richard thinks it is in the state’s best interest to get tangled up in litigation that could do away with most income tax? Or is he just saying that Republicans propose to do nothing about what is either a dangerous error or a potentially dangerous ambiguity? Am I the only person who sees the problem with this response? You think that Richard and his GOP colleagues have got some hidden agenda that would keep them from fixing an ambiguous passage? Or does he think a slap-happy approach to state tax revenue is really the way to go?

Bolstering the latter explanation is the fact that this is not the first time that the geniuses in Jefferson City have proven unable to draft coherent legislation. They made a potentially disastrous drafting error when they tried to push a tax cut bill through last session. And it wasn’t the only such error. Just think – these bozos can’t even get the basics right even when they’ve got outside lobbyists, like the American Legislative Educational Council (ALEC), who want to write legislation for them!

Supporting the hidden agenda thesis, however, is the Governor’s contention that maybe these folks are sneaking in through the back door in order to to do billionaire Rex Sinquefield’s dirty tax cutting work:

Nixon said there were only two possible explanations for how this happened,” the newspaper reported. “It was either an accident or it was put in deliberately ‘at the behest of ideological interests led by one St. Louis billionaire.’ ”

The governor was apparently referring to wealthy financier Rex Sinquefield, who has long advocated eliminating Missouri’s income tax as a way to attract more business to the state.

Nixon hasn’t offered any hard proof for this assertion, but, on the other hand, Missouri’s wild-West attitude toward influence buying in government, coupled with Sinquefield’s rather lavish generosity towards compliant pols, does lend his accusation a certain piquancy, particularly when the GOPers try to pooh-pooh the potential problem when it’s pointed out to them. This point of view suggests that perhaps the strongest resemblance between Missouri GOP pols and Evel Knievel might be that they’re all folks who are (or, in the case of Knievel, were) paid for performing dangerous stunts.

And cutting already low taxes in a low service state is unequivocally a dangerous stunt. The same stunt has backfired in Kansas and it has failed dismally to benefit the citizens of Texas and Oklahoma, states that, while experiencing growth primarily due to their oil reserves, have drastically  curtailed essential services. Which point suggests another significant difference between Missouri GOP pols and Evel Knievel: while Knievel himself shouldered all the risks in return for the cash, the Missouri stuntsmen are content to pocket the bucks (whether quid pro quo or not) and to shove the danger off onto the shoulders of Missouri citizens.

* The word “Missouri” added for clarity.