MOScout Daily Update: Helping Women Access Abortions - Roadmap for Deregulation - GOP After Trump and more...
Non-Profits Providing Women Access
Hell of a story in The Cut, featuring Allison Dreith, former executive director of Pro-Choice Missouri. It’s about non-profits working to help women get access to abortions. Read it here.
If, just ten years earlier, when Dreith had been lobbying for Planned Parenthood and NARAL, someone had told her she would end up dispatching a random hobby pilot to surreptitiously transport a woman across state lines in a four-seater aircraft, she would have thought it sounded like dystopian fiction.
Organizations featured in the article…
The Case for Optimism in the Senate
Earlier this year we were in peak pessimism with regard to the Senate functioning next session. Following nasty and divisive primaries, there was the sense that the factions were more deeply entrenched than ever.
But maybe things aren’t so bad now…
· Last year’s rotten session was preceded with a lot of public hurling of insults between senators. That hasn’t been happening this year. Its absence is notable.
· Last year we were facing down the redistricting process with several senators digging into their predetermined positions, fixing for a fight. There are plenty of issues on the radar now (sports betting, for example), but none with the combustibility of redistricting.
· Sen. Cindy O’Laughlin’s ascension to the floor leader position, if it does nothing else, scrambles the equation a bit. Sen. Caleb Rowden, hailing from the swing district of Columbia, was an easy target for being too moderate for some Republicans. You might not agree with O’Laughlin on some issues, but you can’t say she isn’t conservative to her core.
· Finally, there are eight new senators. A quarter of the body. That will certainly change the energy as well.
Roadmap for Deregulation
Missourinet has an interesting article. It’s basically truckers complaining that their biannual submission of physical fitness must be submitted in person. Read it here.
“We can save a lot of time and a lot of hassle, including people all waiting in line at the DMV, keep people on the road moving goods and services, rather than standing in line at the DMV. We’re in the mobile world and with the internet, you’re able to upload that into the system and pretty much trouble-free on the government side, and much more easier and convenient for every person that has a commercial driver’s license,” [Brent Witte] said… “If you have to take an extra day off work to do this, you already are losing that and if you’re averaging $250 a day in earnings that costs money,” said Witte
Here’s the interesting part…
Witte said during the pandemic, the Missouri Department of Revenue allowed truck drivers to email or fax this information to the agency, but the state has reverted back to the in-person requirement.
· Governor Mike Parson engaged in broad deregulation during the COVID crisis. It’d be helpful exercise to evaluate how many of those regulatory suspensions can be rolled back now with minimal downside risk to Missourians.
Just Leave Kids on Medicaid?
Another possible lesson from the COVID crisis… Kaiser Health Network reports that some state are considering automatically approving children for Medicaid for an extended period of time once they qualify. Read it here.
· Before the covid-19 public health emergency began in 2020, millions of children churned on and off Medicaid each year — an indication that many were losing coverage because of administrative problems, rather than because their family’s income had increased and made them ineligible.
· Spurred by pandemic-era lessons, several states are rethinking their enrollment policies for the youngest Medicaid members. Oregon is leading the way after getting federal approval to implement a new continuous-enrollment policy.
· In 2023, when the public health emergency is expected to end, Oregon will become the first state to allow children who qualify for Medicaid to enroll at birth and stay enrolled until they turn 6, regardless of changes in their household’s income and without having to reapply.
Hawley and the Post-Trump GOP Agenda
Senator Josh Hawley is pushing the new Republican agenda – less free market, more populism.
Here’s his post-Election analysis from Twitter…
· Washington Republicanism lost big Tuesday night. When your “agenda” is cave to Big Pharma on insulin, cave to Schumer on gun control & Green New Deal (“infrastructure”), and tease changes to Social Security and Medicare, you lose
· What are Republicans actually going to do for working people? How about, to start: tougher tariffs on China, reshore American jobs, open up American energy full throttle, 100k new cops on the street. Unrig the system
Why It Matters
If Donald Trump fades as the unifying flag for the Republican Party, what becomes the party’s central tenets? Limited government is no longer an anthem for the GOP. The current Republican Party wants an activist government going after Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Media. Hawley’s prescription amounts to economic nationalism: less international trade, more domestic production, with the government taking a larger role in economy to offset the power of Corporate America.
Meanwhile its hot button issues are almost entirely cultural: anti-transgenderism, anti-wokeism, vigilance against provocative books, etc.
· The question for us: if this is where the Republican Party is headed, how does that manifest itself in Jefferson City?
Lobbyists Registrations
Richard McIntosh added MERC (Missouri Education Reform Council).
Jay Reichard added TEG (Trinity Education Group); and deleted Dell Inc, and Lincoln Strategy Group.
Joe ‘Trey’ Davis deleted Missouri Energy Development Association.
$5K+ Contributions
House Republican Campaign Committee, Inc - $5,200 from Bennie Cook for State Representative.
POL PAC - $7,000 from H&R Block.
Citizens for Good Government - $20,000 from IAFF FirePAC VIC MO.
Birthdays
Happy birthdays to Kelli Dunaway.