It Begins: Missouri Officials Already Planning To Spend More Of Your Money In 2014

Late last week, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon backed off a plan that would have returned some food stamp work requirements to their pre-recession levels. “With greater certainty about what the federal funding level for the food stamp program will be after last week’s budget agreement,” he wrote, “we have made a determination that the appropriate course of action is to maintain the policy that is currently in place.”

In other words: we could have spent less on the program, but … we won’t.

That episode should have been the first clue of what the Missouri Legislature and the governor have in store for their constituents in 2014: big-time government spending. We are two months away from the next legislative session, but right on schedule, we are already seeing news percolate that Jefferson City bureaucrats are expecting even more money to be dumped into the fiscal sinkhole that is Missouri government. [Emphasis mine.]

In a subtle shift from years past, some Missouri budget officials now are openly talking about the potential to spend more – as opposed to emphasizing the need to pare back.

“Revenue is certainly looking better,” said Linda Luebbering, the budget director for Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon. “We don’t have as much of that hole to fill up as we have other years. Hopefully there will be some room to do a few more things” in the next budget.

Sad and predictable. For once, it would be nice to see state officials in Jefferson City plan to spend less of your money, not more.