Missouri’s House is outpacing a Senate slowed down by infighting. Why it matters
One chamber has moved swiftly on a raft of priorities, passing bills on elections, school funding, hospital visitors and guns.
The other sometimes struggles to even approve its own minutes.
The Missouri General Assembly’s annual session, which reached its halfway point this week, has been a study in deeply contrasting approaches to lawmaking.
In the House, representatives are advancing through a Republican-driven agenda with predictable regularity, if not clockwork precision. At the other end of the Capitol in the Senate, accomplishing even the most mundane tasks sometimes becomes a herculean feat.
GOP infighting in the Senate has frequently ground the chamber to a halt and slowed its progress on almost every front. A group of seven senators called the Conservative Caucus insist on using amendments to advance hard-right legislation and don’t hesitate to hold the floor for hours when they feel slighted.
The result is a lopsided tally of achievement that could hold real consequences for Missourians.
The House approved a new congressional map but the Senate has yet to advance a plan as the candidate filing deadline approaches later this month, for instance, raising the possibility judges will eventually draw new boundaries if the inaction continues.
Now, signs point to rising frustrations in the House with the Senate. In a joint statement as the week-long spring break began, House Republican leaders boasted about their chamber’s productivity while drawing a not-so-subtle contrast with the Senate.
“Our members have worked hard during these first months of session to address the issues the people of Missouri care about deeply. We’re extremely proud of what they’ve been able to accomplish and we’re hopeful the Senate will be able to take up many of these measures and pass them into law in the final eight weeks when we return from break,” House Speaker Rob Vescovo, Majority Leader Dean Plocher and Speaker Pro Tem John Wiemann said.
To be sure, the House and Senate are inherently different institutions with their own cultures and norms. The House, where legislators serve two-year terms, is larger and more rambunctious. Contentious debates are sometimes cut off in order to keep bills moving. The smaller and more intimate Senate, where members serve four-year terms, is a less hurried place where personal relationships are emphasized.
But this year has also featured a noticeable productivity gap.
The House has passed 38 bills in 2022. The figure reflects 16 bills approved Thursday alone in a pre-break sprint — many relatively uncontroversial. The Senate has passed eight, with five approved on Thursday.
Senate Republican leaders, speaking to reporters, called the most recent votes evidence senators can work together.
“Despite some difficulties over the past few days and weeks, I would say that this is one of the most productive weeks we’ve had in the Missouri Senate this year,” said Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz, a Sullivan Republican running for U.S. Senate.
One bill passed so far
The General Assembly as a whole has sent Gov. Mike Parson one bill so far, a supplemental budget that included pay raises for state employees and funds Medicaid expansion. It also withholds public funding from Planned Parenthood, a move the organization is challenging in court.
In addition to the spending bill, the measures approved by the Senate include requiring Kansas City to spend at least 25% of its general revenue on police, exempting World Cup tickets from sales tax in Jackson County as part of the effort to lure games to Kansas City and strengthening workforce development programs.
The House bills now awaiting Senate action include proposals that would make it more difficult for initiative petitions to qualify for the ballot and require school districts to provide funding for students who attend charter schools. Other measures would limit the power of hospitals to keep out visitors and allow concealed weapons on public transportation.
Senate Majority Leader Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican, said the House had sent over a “fair amount” of bills and promised over the break to look at what the Senate might be able to take up. He mentioned election legislation as one area where GOP senators have interest.
“It hasn’t been easy. The Senate’s not supposed to be easy and that’s OK,” Rowden said. “But we’re going to do our very best to continue to push forward and find consensus wherever we can and do some good stuff as we move forward.”
The Senate floor has been the site of frequent filibusters by the Conservative Caucus, which uses aggressive tactics to advance right-wing legislation. Those include divisive amendments and extended speeches during typically perfunctory work, such as approval of the previous day’s minutes.
The most pitched battle between the caucus and Senate GOP leaders centers on congressional redistricting. Hard-right senators want a map that would gerrymander Kansas City Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, allowing Republicans to pick up an additional seat in Congress. More mainstream Republicans warn that would spread Republican voters too thin, risking Democratic victories.
But the Conservative Caucus has also turned to amendments as a way to advance its agenda, at least temporarily derailing legislation that enjoys broad bipartisan support. A bill to extend Medicaid coverage to new mothers for up to a year after birth stalled after an amendment was offered to ban Planned Parenthood from receiving public dollars. Debate on a bill about sexual assault survivors ended after an amendment was put forward to make it a crime for teachers to give K-12 students obscene material.
The obscenity proposal prompted Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder, a Sikeston Republican and a co-sponsor of the sex assault bill, to hold an extraordinary news conference on Wednesday where she denounced the Conservative Caucus while flanked by a bipartisan majority of the Senate.
“It’s time the people of this state get more than a soundbite or a tweet or a Facebook ad. It’s time we shine a light on the problem and the problem is exactly what makes me and the majority of Missourians distrust and dislike politicians,” Thompson Rehder said. “These guys need to halt their campaigning and work for the job they are currently elected to do.”
The Conservative Caucus, which currently has four members running for other offices, shows few signs of backing down. In an unusual move that illustrates the festering divisions, the caucus held its own news conference Thursday after Republican and Democratic leaders delivered their traditional updates.
Amendments are a regular part of the legislative process and very few bills make their way through the General Assembly unamended, caucus members said, defending their tactics.
“I really don’t understand senators who say their bill can’t be amended,” said Sen. Bob Onder, a Lake St. Louis Republican who is running for St. Charles County executive.
Onder contends many Republican senators agree with the goals of the Conservative Caucus, such as keeping obscene materials away from K-12 students and “protecting women’s sports” – meaning barring transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.
“They say they want to do all these things I’ve just outlined, so I’m hopeful in the second half of the session we can work together and get those things done,” he said.
A ‘double-edged sword’
While it’s possible spring break will allow tensions to cool, previous reconciliations were short-lived. Rowden hasn’t ruled out the possibility of deploying a procedural maneuver known as “calling the previous question” in order to force votes on stalled legislation.
But such a move would likely destroy any remaining comity in the Senate. It would also likely take support from Democrats. Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, an Independence Democrat, indicated that outside of moments of anger, there’s been no serious discussion of calling the previous question.
Rizzo said the current atmosphere reminded him of the late 90s, when the Senate was still under Democratic control. “They’d become so powerful that they just never could see themselves being in the minority,” he said.
In the House, legislators have watched the Senate’s struggles with mixed emotions. While Republicans have hinted at their frustration, Democrats see both advantages and disadvantages to the upper chamber’s plodding pace.
Senate inaction makes it easier to fight Republican priorities, said House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat. On the other hand, there are bipartisan measures that have been slowed down.
The budget isn’t moving as quickly as Democrats would like, she said. When Gov. Parson, a Republican, rolled out his budget proposal in January, it received a generally warm reception from Democrats. The proposal includes nearly $12 billion in new spending, much of it fueled by robust tax collections and federal pandemic aid.
“It is a double-edged sword, absolutely,” Quade said.
