MO GOP Hypocrisy

GOP state lawmakers want you to think they are reducing spending. Yet, spending is on the rise.

There are plenty of examples to choose from.

Missouri House Majority Floor Leader Tim Jones, a Republican from Eureka, told his constituents earlier this week that he has cut state spending.

Even after being confronted about the ever-rising totals by Missouri Journal, Jones insisted that he will continue to tell voters that he cuts spending.

Jones is in line to be speaker, if the GOP retains the majority and if his colleagues vote for him when the Missouri House convenes in January.

Several years ago, the speaker disignee started the practice of making some of the committee assignments prior to officially assuming office.

This week, Jones announced that Rep. Rick Stream, a Republican from Kirkwood, would be the next chairman of the budget committee.

Stream told Kirkwood Patch that .

However, total state spending for this fiscal year, which started on July 1, is set to increase 3.4 percent to $24.1 billion compared to the amount appropriated by lawmakers for last fiscal year.

The amended budget proposal for this fiscal year by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, would have cut year-over-year spending by around 1 percent. Instead, the Missouri General Assembly, controlled by the GOP, added more than $1 billion to the plan during the budget-making process.

Following the money and not the political rhetoric shows that state spending rarely falls.

Throughout the last 30 years, total expenditures have dropped year-over-year only three times.

Spending, meanwhile, has increased 468 percent from $3.9 billion in 1981 to $22.2 billion in 2011.

By Brian R. Hook, brhook@missourijournal.com, (314) 482-7944

Hook is editor of Missouri Journal, which tracks the economy across the Show-Me State. 

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