After legislators failed to agree on passing a Medicaid expansion bill last session, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said he felt like a counselor for an Alcoholic Anonymous program.
“It’s a 12-step program,” Nixon said at the St. Louis Regional Chamber Public Policy Speaker Series luncheon on July 18. “First you had to get everyone to admit that the election was over, this guy won, the Supreme Court upheld it, the funds are coming and it affects Missouri.”
Expanding Medicaid eligibility, as mandated by the Affordable Care Act, was one of the topics that Nixon touched upon at the Regional Chamber’s luncheon. Nixon said he thinks legislators can come together to pass a Medicare bill, and it’s at the top of his priorities for next session.
“It’s the smart thing to do because everyone here should not be sending $300 out of your pocket to Washington, D.C. to be spent in other states to improve and increase access to health care,” he said.
“We want to spend that money right here in Missouri. We can do a better job here than send it to other states, and plus it will cut health care costs.”
By refusing to accept these federal dollars, Missouri will continue to see escalating health-care premiums, he said.
Medicaid expansion was one of the opportunities the legislature missed last session, he said. The other was its failure to pass a comprehensive tax-credit reform to ensure that “these programs generate stronger returns for taxpayers.”
In his speech, Nixon also explained why he vetoed House Bill 253, legislation that intends to broadly cut taxes for Missourians and particularly for those with high incomes. The bill’s drastic cuts to educational funding would in turn affect the state’s best economic development tool – a strong workforce, he said.
“Without a strong public education system, our workers won’t have the skills that they need,” Nixon said. “Nothing will have a greater impact on our economy than the commitment we make right now to our children’s education.”
At the St. Louis Regional Chamber, members have set a goal of putting St. Louis in the top 10 metropolitan areas for college attainment.
“As you said, ‘No accomplishment would be more important to our future economic viability,’” Nixon said. “I could not agree more. That is why House Bill 253, the recent tax bill passed by legislature, cannot become law. I vetoed because it would undermine permanently our ability to support viable public services. It would devastate funding for public education.”
The bill would take $800 million out of public services, Nixon said. To put that in context of college funding, $800 million is the same amount the state allots for its two- and four-year colleges and universities combined, he said.
The legislation would also eliminate the current sales tax exemption on prescription drugs and result in an estimated tax increase of $200 million annually.
House Bill 253 is one of 29 that Nixon has vetoed, but he said he has signed a number of bills for targeted tax cuts. He is more than willing to have discussions about rational ways to make the state’s tax code leaner and more competitive, he said.
“Unfortunately House Bill 253 fails to meet any of these standards,” he said.
Nixon noted that in a September 2011 report, the state auditor recognized that Missouri has the seventh-lowest state taxes as a percentage of personal income. In 2012, the Federation of Tax Administrators ranked Missouri the fifth-lowest in per capita state taxes in the country, representing a lower tax burden than all of our surrounding states. And a 2012 report by Ernst & Young and the Council on State Taxation ranked Missouri’s effective business tax rate as the eighth-lowest in the country.
“In a time when many other states were raising taxes and going into debt, here in Missouri we cut $1.8 billion in spending and 4,500 government positions,” Nixon said. “The state government’s workforce is the smallest it’s been in two decades. We’ve taken huge strides, but we’re not done yet.”
