'Bickering' among Missouri GOP gets 'worse and worse' leaving lawmakers concerned ahead of elections

Infighting among Missouri state Republican leaders has enraptured the party for three years and is not expected to improve in 2024, Missouri Independent's Jason Hancock reports ahead of the lawmakers' session Wednesday, January 3.

"I would guess that a sizable amount of the session is going to be spent navigating people making campaign commercials on the House and Senate floor, bickering at each other and trying to force recorded votes that turn into campaign mailers," GOP Rep. Tony Lovasco told the Independent.

Hancock reports, "Complicating matters further, medical provider taxes that are vital to sustaining the state’s Medicaid program expire this year. The last time the taxes needed to be renewed, the issue derailed the Senate and required a special legislative session during the summer."

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State Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat, "hopes there are uncontroversial issues that people can rally around 'that we can get done and deliver for the people we represent,"'including 'passing the budget or extending the FRA — that are core functions of government that need to happen, she said."

Arthur added, "I hope that the policies I dislike are the ones that fail because of the dysfunction."

Hancock reports:

Factional divides in the Senate are already raising fear of a replay of the 2021 session, when the normally routine process of renewing taxes on hospitals, nursing homes, pharmacies and ambulances — known as the federal reimbursement allowance, or FRA — splintered the Senate.

Renewal of the FRA is crucial for funding Medicaid. When it came up in 2021, the conservative caucus demanded that the FRA include an amendment barring the state from paying for some contraceptive medications and devices, and preventing Planned Parenthood from being a Medicaid provider.

When infighting killed a renewal during the regular session, lawmakers were forced to return over the summer. The FRA was renewed for three years only after 11 of the 23 Republicans present voted with all 10 Democrats to defeat the conservative caucus’ amendment.

Six GOP senators, Hancock notes, "most of whom were part of the disbanded conservative caucus" recently "announced the formation of the Freedom Caucus."

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Republican senator and Secretary of State candidate Denny Hoskin said, "We’re now a part of a national network, and my hope is that all 24 Republican senators would be part of a Freedom Caucus. But unfortunately, as we’ve seen in the past, some Republican senators don’t look too conservative like they promised their constituents."

Senator Lincoln Hough, who is also chairman of the Senate appropriations committee, added, "There’s gonna be a whole lot of people that do things for political reasons, as always. It’s just gotten worse and worse and worse."

Democratic state Rep. LaDonna Appelbaum of St. Louis emphasized, "I am greatly concerned that, because it is a campaign year, it’s going to be a s**tshow."

Hancock's full report is here.