While reading Mary Elizabeth Coleman’s recent letter to the editor touting her leadership in the Missouri Senate’s newly created Government Efficiency Committee (or Missouri DOGE), I found myself laughing out loud at the irony.
“One of the most frustrating parts of the Missouri Legislature for any taxpayer is to watch the failure of the state to implement the clearly defined policies the people have enacted through their elected officeholders and the inability to rein in duplication, waste and abuse in our budgets,” Coleman said in the letter.
“Missourians deserve a government that works for them, not against them.”
The Missouri GOP, of which Coleman is a member, has controlled both the state House and Senate for two decades. If there is a problem implementing legislation and controlling waste and abuse in the budgets, I have a good idea where to point the finger.
Missouri has a laundry list of problems: Out of the entire U.S., we rank 50th in starting teacher pay; 50th in state worker pay; 49th in percentage of school funding coming from the state; 44th in maternal mortality; 30th in infant mortality and fifth highest in gun deaths. We regularly rank in the bottom 10 states for quality of life. We have crumbling roads and infrastructure, and our Department of Transportation is wildly understaffed. More than a third of our schools are now on four-day school weeks, with nearly half of all rural schools on a four-day week.
At this point, we must assume that the way things are in our state is the way Missouri GOP lawmakers want them. There has been absolutely nothing standing in their way to make this state the Republican eutopia they dream of. The small Democratic minority certainly hasn’t been able to throw a wrench into their plans. Not even the majority of voters have been able to deter the GOP’s plan.
When Missourians take to the ballot and vote to amend the state’s constitution or pass other initiatives, all too often Missouri legislators swoop in with a pat on the head and say, “We know you didn’t really mean it. We know better,” before reversing the will of the people.
In the past, the Missouri Legislature overrode the people when they voted to increase minimum wage increases, voted to shut down puppy mills, voted for clean energy, voted to expand Medicaid and voted against concealed carry.
In the November election, 58 percent of voters supported Proposition A, which gradually increases the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2026, indexes further increases to inflation and requires some businesses to offer employees paid sick and family leave. Missouri Republicans quickly proposed bills to repeal the paid leave and the inflation adjustment and to delay the minimum wage increases and alter other parts of the proposition. Recently, legislation passed in the Missouri House to entirely repeal the mandated sick leave portion.
Also in November, Missouri passed Amendment 3 to the state constitution, which overturned the state’s abortion ban, by a 52 percent majority. That was after legislators, including Coleman, unsuccessfully tried to get it knocked off the ballot so voters couldn’t have their say at all.
Not even one day after the Amendment 3 passage, GOP lawmakers promised to reverse the law. Dozens of bills have already been filed seeking to either repeal or rein in Amendment 3 since its passage.
“I’m here to tell you the Missouri supermajority of Republicans will not stand for this,” said Coleman after the amendment passed.
A government working for you instead of against you, indeed.
I know some people will argue that Missouri’s GOP legislators are working to overturn Democratic votes and are representing what their constituents want. But, in a state that went 60-40 for Trump, they’ll have to try harder to convince me that Democrats magically came up with more than 50 percent of the vote on all these initiatives.
Many lawmakers seem intent on no longer having to bother with the pesky business of letting Missouri voters have a say on important topics and are working to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution by changing the way citizen-led measures may be placed on the ballot, even though citizen-led ballot initiatives have been allowed in Missouri for more than 100 years.
With the state’s legislators’ attention focused on political stunts and culture war issues instead of the people they represent, it came as no surprise that Missouri’s 2024 legislative session was the least productive in recent years, with just 46 bills passed.
Again, with the GOP’s supermajority in Missouri, it really takes some chutzpah for them to complain about how awful the government functions when their party has been in power for nearly a quarter of a century. It’s even worse that they want to eliminate citizen-led initiatives in an effort to gain even more power.
It reminds me of my toddler, who at dinner asks for cookies or ice cream before he’s touched his meat and vegetables. Maybe somebody needs to tell the Missouri legislators what I tell my 2-year-old: Eat what’s on your plate. If you do a good job, you can have dessert.
Maybe if Missouri politicians nixed the culture war issues and instead focused on improving the lives of more than 6 million Missourians by making our state safer, cleaner and more affordable, we might not rank in the bottom 10 in so many important quality-of-life indicators. It’s well past time for them to start doing the boring, unglamorous work of basic governance.
It won’t get them on national television or popular podcasts, but it is their job – the one they asked voters to give them and the one they promised to do. It’s time Missouri politicians stop asking for dessert before they’ve eaten their dinner as we fall further and further behind.
Mrs. Coleman, it’s time for you and your colleagues to eat your vegetables.