Let me point out that I am a fiscal Conservative. I do not think the Democratic Party’s effort to spend money for new projects is prudent. I believe there is a better way to cope with our Country's debt. However I recognize there are boneheads on both sides of the isle in Federal and State government.
For instance St. Charles County Republican Rep. Mark Parkinson is the genius behind the bill (H.B. 2131), which he believes will save the economic debt of the state of Missouri by passing
this law which would take one dollar each week from the Missouri Governor Jay Nixon's salary and purchase a Powerball lottery ticket on behalf of the citizens of the state.
Any winnings must be deposited into the state’s general revenue fund until it exceeds $300 million, thus eliminating the budget shortfall.
Believe it or not some Republican lawmakers think this is an excellent idea.
By the way, the Columbia Missourian quotes the Missouri Lottery Fact Book, which puts odds of winning at 195,249,054 to one.
The current jackpot is estimated at $76 million.
1 comment:
HB 2131 is a means to start a conversation about our Governor proposing a budget that is $300 million out of balance. We have a constitutional mandate to pass a BALANCED budget. He recommended an unbalanced budget based in hopes that $300M would be included in future federal legislation. It appears that the federal legislation will pass without that money for the state. He should have made a budget proposal based on what we have, not on what he hopes to have sometime in the future.
That being said, we must craft our budget with a $300M cut to his budget right off the top. This puts the House and the Senate in a precarious position. This would force the legislature to make cuts to the Governors budget, despite the fact that he sent it to us out of balance. Governor Nixon can claim, after we pass our budget that the General Assembly made cuts to program "x" and project "y" while his budget proposal fully funded them. In this situation, Governor Nixon did recommend fully funding "x" and "y" despite not having the resources to pay for them.
We have another option, passing Governor Nixon's budget as recommended. This would put him in a political bind because he would have to make deep withholds when time comes to pay the bills. This option is equally wrong. The only legislation the constitution requires us to pass is the budget. Playing political games with the budget process is unacceptable. We are all in this tough economic time together and must work together, despite party affiliation.
Unfortunately, attempts to garner Governor Nixon's leadership and recommendations on the budget and its unbalanced nature have fallen upon deaf ears.
I wholeheartedly agree with the Governor, HB 2131 is "silly”. It was never intended to be a serious bill. It was however, an attempt to direct attention to a serious and unfortunate situation: Governor Nixon’s unbalanced state budget proposal.
In my view, we had two options. Either we could talk about the unbalanced budget proposal ad infinitum while the press ignores the situation or I could file a "silly" bill, get a hearing, and have the press beat down my door for comment.
After the first option failed I chose the latter, hence HB 2131.
Sincerely,
Mark A. Parkinson
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