Two stories in the news on September 18, 2024 in Missouri point out the continued cognitive dissonance of Republican voters in the state. One story involves recent polls which show Missourians leaning overwhelmingly to Republican candidates for President and US Senator, even when those Republican candidates are Donald Trump and Josh Hawley. The race for Governor is also dominated by the Republican candidate in polling. Yet the same polls are showing that statewide ballot initiatives to re-instate abortion rights and raise the minimum wage to $15/hour are likely to pass.
https://fox4kc.com/news/republican-candidates-lead-missouri-races-on-november-ballot-pollDoesn't that sound rather, um…. Counter-productive?
If Missouri voters WANT things like codified protections around abortion and prenatal care and decent wages, wouldn't it make more sense to vote for more Democratic candidates in state and local races? Missouri is absolutely gerrymandered which accounts for the over-weighted tilt towards Republicans but as statewide elections for Governor, Attorney General and Secretary of State illustrate, the state is still heavily Republican. If the citizens feel the need to consistently revert to ballot initiatives to override the legislature and governor they keep electing, it would appear the minds of many in that electorate fail to grasp how the process is working and how it could work.
If Missouri voters needed any reminder of how capricious and plain mean Republicans in the state can be, news outlets also covered a story regarding the state's failure to pass a budget that provided legal required services for mentally disabled citizens under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The Department of Justice sent the state a formal notice on June 18, 2024 that it was out of compliance with federal law.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-finds-state-missouri-unnecessarily-institutionalizes-adults-mental-healthThe government's position is that the state is reverting to merely institutionalizing mental disabled adults in need of specific types of care rather than funding community based programs that allow the patient to spend more time in non-institutional settings closer to home and family. Presumably, avoiding institutionalization is preferable for the patient and possibly preferable to the government by avoiding the higher cost of delivering such services in a more expensive institutional setting.
So how did the Missouri Republicans react? The outgoing Republican Governor included $79.4 million dollars in his formal budget proposal for 2025 but Republicans in the House and Senate stripped that language before passing the budget. Knowing the DOJ already formally notified the state of its ADA compliance failure, the governor warned his own party that dropping the funding was purely political slight of hand to allow people to claim to be frugal in spending the people's money when the funds WOULD have to be provided in a separate supplemental budget process for needs that arise after a formal budget is set.
Keep in mind, the state is actually running a small surplus with a budget around $50 billion dollars. The surplus doesn't stem from some huge windfall tax that is raking in billions in a bubble economy. Missouri's income tax rate tops out at 4.95 percent. Despite that absurdly low tax rate, the state is still running a surplus because Republicans are that tight on spending for everything from social services to infrastructure rehabilitation. The entire state is crumbling apart but hey, our taxes are low.
The required $79.4 million would be 0.16% of the total budget. As the governor himself noted, the money WILL eventually be budgeted and provided. But in the short term, it IS being withheld and services to approximately 1952 previously identified individuals. That is pushing care responsibilities onto family members that is disrupting their work schedules, causing needless stress and not providing the actual care required under federal law.
And Missouri Republican politicians don't care. They get to carry on the charade of being stingy with tax dollars and use that in their re-election bids. Apparently, none of them have family members or know anyone affected by this charade. Or maybe they do and they don't care? Or maybe campaign contributions from nursing home companies who profit from over-use of nursing homes are somehow worth more than individual donor dollars?
WTH
