KC Star: Missouri Democrats roll out Medicaid Expansion Bill

Kerry Noble, CEO of Pemiscot Memorial Hospital in Hayti, Mo., stood alongside House Minority Leader Jake Hummel to unveil legislation that would expand Missouri’s Medicaid eligibility requirements to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, as called for by the federal health care law.

Who’s Behind Anti-Worker Attacks in Missouri? ALEC

Who's behind all the anti-worker attacks in the Missouri General Assembly, pushing so-called ‘right to work’ and ‘paycheck deception’ bills? The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), among others. Check out all these connections between sponsors and co-sponsors and ALEC:

  • Speaker Tim Jones is ALEC’s state co-chair, and has enjoyed numerous ALEC junkets. He is the first co-sponsor of HB77 and HB91.
  • HB77 sponsor Eric Burlison has been an ALEC member
  • SB71 Sponsor Mike Parson has been an ALEC member
  • SB238 sponsor Ed Emery is a former ALEC chairman
  • HB95 sponsor Bill White has been an ALEC member
  • SB134 sponsor David Sater has introduced other ALEC legislation as his own, even forgetting to remove “{insert state}” placeholders when filing in the Senate
  • HB91 sponsor Donna Lichtenegger has been an ALEC member
  • House Workforce Development and Workplace Safety Chairman Bill Lant has been an ALEC member
  • Senate Majority Floor Leader Ron Richard has been an ALEC member
  • HB95 sponsor Bill White has been an ALEC member
  • HB95 co-sponsor Rick Brattin has been an ALEC member

Moreover, all of the following so-called ‘right to work’ bills lift mirror ALEC’s model directly, and are not written by Missourians or for Missourians: SB 76, SB 134, SB 238, HB 77, HB 91 and HB 95. A head to head comparison of the bills may be found below.

"Legislators need to be listening to ordinary people, not corporate special interests pushing an extreme agenda," said Sean Soendker Nicholson, Progress Missouri’s Executive Director. "The bills being pushed by ALEC put corporate profits ahead of the well being of average Americans. It's time to make sure that ordinary people--not corporate interests--are in charge of our government."

At least 37 major corporate sponsors have abandoned ALEC in recent months amid mounting criticism of the organization’s extreme agenda, including prominent companies like General Electric, Amazon.com, Coca-Cola, and Walmart. However, corporations such as Koch Industries remain fiercely loyal to the corporate bill factory.

Through ALEC task forces, unelected corporate lobbyists actually vote as equals with state legislators on 'model' bills in closed-door meetings where the press and public are not allowed. Corporations give gifts to ALEC ‘scholarship’ trips for legislators and their families to attend junkets where lobbyists and special interest groups give legislators their wish lists for changing laws. The ALEC corporate bill mill represents the institutionalization of a kind of corruption and distortion of our democracy that is unacceptable to a free people, especially in an era in which corporations and CEOs already have too much influence over our elections and public policies.

Side-by-Side comparison of ALEC Models and bills currently filed in Missouri’s General Assembly below. 

Exclusive Audio: Missouri Legislators Conspire With National Agents to Plot Anti-Worker Attacks

Progress Missouri today released audio of a February 5, 2013 strategy session in the Missouri Capitol that featured speakers from corporate front groups, including Californian Lew Uhler of the National Tax Limitation Committee, Jared Rodriquez of the Western Michigan Policy Forum.  Discussion topics included:

  • Fundraising threats to Republican lawmakers who did not support the organizers’ extreme agenda
  • “Big money” coming into Missouri from unspecified national sources to finance anti-worker campaigns and candidates
  • Strategies for conducting public opinion research to help hoodwink Missouri voters into supporting policies designed explicitly to shrink the middle class and increase corporate power.

“What you’re doing here, what you’re part of here, is a national movement, and you’re well positioned to keep this battle alive,” said Lew Uhler of the California-based National Tax Limitation Committee, making it more apparent than ever that bills like ALEC’s so-called “right to work” proposal are being driven by national corporate agents, not Missourians. 

Moreover, the message to attendees was clear: pass the extreme bills, or your campaign accounts may dry up. “If you don’t take on the fights, and these guys that are giving money? I mean, this is just all basic 101 -- you’re going to start losing donors,” said Steve Hunter, former state legislator from Joplin.

Listen for yourself: 

Standing Room Only

It was Standing Room Only for today’s hearing on the Missouri GOP's latest anti-voting bills, sponsored by Reps. Stanley Cox and Tony Dugger.  Not SRO due to its immense popularity, mind you -- everyone had to stand because THERE WERE NO CHAIRS.  And as a matter of fact, there was no hearing room either--just the side gallery of the House chamber.  For the rest of us, this is like holding a very important meeting standing in front of the office refrigerator.

Funny thing is, there were plenty of committee rooms sitting empty at the time of the hearing:

So what gives?  Sure seems like these folks are trying to hide something.  

National Corporate Front Groups Conspiring with MO Leaders to Silence Workers

Secretive strategy session scheduled for 8pm Tuesday in Capitol Basement

Documents obtained by Progress Missouri indicate that the Republican leaders in Jefferson City are working directly with national, extreme front groups to silence Missouri workers and increase corporate power. Leaders from the the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Western Michigan Policy Forum and National Tax Limitation Committee are scheduled to speak at tonight’s strategy session at 8pm in Hearing Room 3, per House leadership communications.

Further demonstrating the involvement of extreme corporate front groups, the so-called “right to work” legislation introduced by Rep. Eric Burlison and co-sponsored by Speaker Tim Jones comes directly from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Progress Missouri analysis has shown.

“Our legislators need to be listening to Missourians and solving Missouri problems, not following the orders of extreme billionaires and their secretive front groups,” said Sean Soendker Nicholson, Executive Director of Progress Missouri. “These bills are all about limiting the political voices of workers and the middle class on behalf of CEOs and corporations.”

“As Martin Luther King said in 1961: ‘In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.’”

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Who needs evidence when you have a pretty chart and touch screen thingy?

Rex Sinquefield lobbyist Travis Brown went on CNBC last week to promote a very pretty-touch-screen-chart-thingy in place of fact-based analysis. Despite the hosts' fascination with Brown's bright shiny object, they still managed to poke several massive holes in his logic. As you watch it, note how one of the mesmerized CNBC folks pops Brown's balloon with the inconvenient fact, "there is no conclusive connection between tax rates and the reasons that people move."

For fact-based analysis of giveaways to the One Percent, check out recent studies by the Missouri Budget Project and The Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy.

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