MOScout Daily Update: Senate Passes Budget with Dem Votes - No New Pool for Hatfield - Parson on Team Loudermill and more…
Senate Passes Budget
After all the hoopla, the Senate passed the budget bills and the FRA tax renewal in a long day. There were flashpoints, but the steady progress was never derailed, and it was mostly an anti-climatic parade of motions, symbolic amendments and votes.
The Freedom Caucus and allies voted NO on most of the budget bills. The exception was the bill funding the Department of Public Safety because no one wants to vote to “defund the police” now. The lone NO on that bill was Sen. Mike Moon.
Otherwise, Sens. Rick Brattin, Jill Carter, Bill Eigel, Denny Hoskins, Moon, Andrew Koenig, and Nick Schroer were consistent NO votes because they want smaller government. They were often joined by Sens. Ben Brown and Mary Elizabeth Coleman.
This continuing fracture within the Senate Republican Caucus meant that Democrats joined with the “Regular Republicans” to provide enough votes to pass the budget.
Minority Leader John Rizzo spoke about this phenomenon and the Democrat calculus in providing the votes.
· Go count some of those votes up there on the budget. I'd imagine if most of them, if not all of them, if you minus nine [Democratic votes] on them, they don't [pass]. But we believe in funding government… we believe in a social safety net, and we believe teachers should have a minimum salary… We believe in roads and bridges and I-70…
· But what we could have done is easily gone to leadership and said, you know what, we won't vote for any of these. That drops you below 18!
· And more than likely in that situation what would happen is they would probably go to certain members of their party they've had obstacles with and they would allow them to pass a draconian budget. That's what would have happened. But we could have played it. We could have tried it.
Why It Matters
This highlights the importance of the upcoming Republican Senate primaries in the determining the shape of coalitions in the upper chamber.
Freedomers Bill Eigel, Denny Hoskins and Andrew Koenig are being termed out. Sens. Rick Brattin and Mike Moon face primary challenges. With the exit of Sen. Jill Carter, that leaves only Sen. Nick Schroer as a certain returning Freedom Caucus member.
But there are potential future Freedom Caucus members in several Senate primaries that could replenish the FC’s numbers.
· A vibrant Freedom Caucus helps Democrats by keeping the Republican agenda less unified, and by making their votes critical in certain circumstances.
No New Pool for Hatfield
Sen. Denny Hoskins attempted to insert language in the budget to prevent money going to diversity programs. “No funds shall be expended for intra-departmental ‘Diversity, Equity, Inclusion,’ or ‘Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging’ training, programs, staffing, hiring, or any other intra-departmental initiative…”
Sen. John Rizzo argued against the amendment by saying it’d just end up making lawyers rich and the Missouri Supreme Court would find it unconstitutional. “I think it's pretty clear and abundant that this is legislating through the budget process, which is unconstitutional, has never been allowed, and the only thing that we're going to end up doing is either buying Chuck Hatfield the Olympic-sized swimming pool when he sues us again, or we're going to be able to stick together and vote stuff like this down…
Next Steps
The House will convene today to pass the budget bills. Democrats will speechify and stomp, but there’s no expectation that these bills won’t pass largely along party lines.
The Senate will have a technical session today, and then re-convenes on Monday (noon) as the legislature begins its final week.
IP Reform will be the hot topic for the Senate. Sen. Bill Eigel, in the wake of his filibuster a week or so ago, said that there were 18 senators committed to doing whatever is necessary to move it forward. The implication was that there are 18 votes for a PQ.
I made a quickie spreadsheet trying to eyeball where senators would fall on PQ-ing for IP Reform, and it’s tight. It’s unclear to me that there are 18 votes.
· The obvious fallback, if Dems filibuster and there’s not the will to PQ, is to revert to their previous compromise: a clean concurrent majorities question without the ballot candy.
Parson on Team Loudermill
Speaking to reporters Governor Mike Parson declared himself on Team Loudermill, and said he didn’t think the Attorney General’s Office should be representing the state senators being sued.
I’m gonna tell you this: we are not gonna target innocent people in this state. [Denton Loudermill] did nothing wrong whatsoever other than he went to a parade and he drank beer and he was Hispanic. That’s all that guy done. Period… Politicians have to be responsible and have to be held to a higher standard… you don’t get a free pass just because you’re a politician.
· One MOScouter snarks: No free passes?.. Does that apply to NFL coaches’ sons too?
Roundup Movie Coming?
Funny to see this item in the Kansas City Star as the legislature considers Rep. Dane Diehl’s HB 2763 dealing with liability for Roundup.
Rocket Science announced the cast of the movie Monsanto... Glen Powell, Anthony Mackie and Laura Dern will star… based on the true story of the cast of the Johnson v Monsanto Co. case… Johnson was a groundskeeper using the Monsanto chemical weed killer, Roundup. Dern plays Monsanto toxicologist Dr. Melinda Rogers, who testifies that Roundup is safe. Johnson claimed the frequent use of Roundup at work caused his non-Hodgkins Lymphoma…
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Birthdays
Happy birthdays to Ron Hicks, and Michelle Sherod.