Missouri anticipated around $80 million from these frozen programs. The Department of Education’s budget summary suggests the funding for many of these frozen programs will be consolidated and given as a lump sum under the K-12 Simplified Funding Program.

This fund seems to be designed like a block grant, as it would allow states to spend money on previously allowable activities (such as after-school programs) but with fewer administrative regulations. This model is not unprecedented, as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is currently funded using a block grant, and there have been discussions about switching Medicaid to a block grant structure as well.

The department’s actions could signal that federal funding to states may continue to decrease, and there may be fewer strings attached to federal funding. That would mean that states, including Missouri, will have to decide which programs that rely on federal funding will be sustained, and to what extent.

Evaluating Deeper Budget Decisions

Missouri likely will need to make some hard budget decisions in the coming years. Prior to COVID, federal dollars comprised about 14 percent of Missouri’s total revenue for K-12 education. In 2021–22, an additional $1 billion in federal dollars ballooned that percentage to 28. In 2022–23, the federal share fell slightly to 25 percent. In my colleague Elias Tsapelas’ paper “Saving Federalism,” he notes that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (DESE) inflation-adjusted federal spending was roughly 45% higher in fiscal year 2022 than fiscal year 2011.

This extra money is fizzling out as the pandemic spending evaporates and the Trump Administration continues to evaluate longstanding programs and rules. The changes at the federal level should incentivize Missouri to rightsize the budget by eliminating unnecessary or unhelpful spending. Establishing a Missouri Office of Government Efficiency would be a good initial step.

Beyond that, Missouri will need to take a more proactive approach to funding specific education programs. Should we increase funding for after-school programs at the expense of a program to improve teacher effectiveness? Before the recent federal policy shift, Missouri was largely guided in these decisions by what we could get federal money for. Now, DESE and school districts will need to set their priorities.

Here’s to hoping Missouri can rise to the challenge and prioritize programs with the greatest potential to benefit students.

The post A Freeze in July? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Congress is expected to debate a budget reconciliation package later this spring that primarily extends tax cuts passed in 2018 but also may include some federal Medicaid spending reforms. Here are a few ideas that have been discussed (keep in mind this is a non-exhaustive list, and all details are subject to change):

• Reduce “enhanced” federal match: As I explained in earlier parts of this series, the federal government is currently paying 90% of all Medicaid costs for able-bodied adults in the expansion population but only 65% for everyone else (aged, blind, disabled, etc.). Congress is considering reducing its expansion share to something closer to what is paid for the traditional population.
• Rein in financing gimmicks: In recent years, states have ramped up their use of Medicaid financing gimmicks to help pay for rising healthcare costs. Missouri is more reliant on provider taxes than almost any other state in the country. Congress is considering changing this arrangement to reduce the amount of money states can earn with these gimmicks.
• Work requirements: Show-Me Institute researchers have been writing about the potential of implementing Medicaid work requirements for more than a decade. But the federal government has rarely allowed them, and after a few court cases several years ago, it was determined that congressional action was needed for them to move forward. While it’s unclear who would be included in the requirements, how exactly they’d work, or whether they would be possible in Missouri, it’s certainly worth watching what Congress decides to do on this topic.

In the coming weeks and months, I’ll be keeping a close eye on whether Congress follows through with any of these reforms. It’s never too early to begin thinking about, if enacted, what they could mean for Missouri. There’s no doubt that the federal government reducing its spending on Medicaid could have an enormous impact on our state’s budget. But as with most things, the devil will be in the details. It will be particularly interesting to see if the federal government affords states any additional flexibility to deal with potential Medicaid changes.

In the next post of this series, I’ll discuss some of the steps Missouri’s lawmakers can take today to reform Medicaid and prepare for any opportunities in the future that could help get the state’s program back on a sustainable fiscal track.

The post Medicaid’s Check-Up: Part 5 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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For years now, I have written about how Missouri’s spending habits will eventually prove unsustainable. As a quick reminder, Missouri has set a new record for the largest budget in state history in each of the past thirteen years. Between fiscal years 2019 and 2023 alone, the state’s total budget nearly doubled, and spending of state income and sales tax dollars grew by more than 42%. In other words, this isn’t a trend that can be explained away as solely a federally fueled phenomenon.

Of course, it is true that over the past few years Missouri has received an enormous influx of federal funds as part of the response to COVID-19 and the large infrastructure bill. But as it always does, the federal government will soon begin winding down its state aid, leaving Missouri’s lawmakers with the difficult task of deciding how to fill the holes that their federal counterparts left behind.

As I explained in my report last year, Saving Federalism¸ government spending typically only grows, and lawmakers in Washington, D.C. are a major reason why this is the case. The most common way the feds have kept perpetually growing spending has been through increased financial support during times of emergency.

During the 2008 recession, and again in recent years, the federal government has offered states generous funding to keep their budgets afloat and help them avoid the need for any service cuts. But at the same time, federal officials create or expand government programs that they have no intention of funding at the same level going forward, knowing full well how difficult it will be for states to pick up more of the bill or scale back the program once the emergency is over. This is exactly what Missouri’s government will begin experiencing in 2024.

As next year’s budget requests for the state’s executive departments show, state taxpayers will need to chip in hundreds of millions of additional dollars to continue funding the services expanded by the federal government’s initiatives. Two of the most expensive examples include further extending Medicaid coverage to individuals who likely don’t qualify for the program, and continuing rate increases with state taxpayer dollars for federally subsidized child care that go beyond what the federal government will cover. To be clear, these are dollars that would otherwise be used to fund Missouri’s—not Washington, D.C.’s—spending priorities.

Making matters worse is that reports indicate that state tax collections are down compared to last year, meaning that Missourians can less afford this added expense than in years past. Going into the 2024 legislative session, it’s clear that reining in the budget should be one of our lawmaker’s top priorities. The first step should be rejecting funding for any effort to make temporary federal programs permanent.

The post Growing, Growing, Gone appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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As the sub-headline of Catherine Gewertz 2019 Education Week article states, “Through ‘action civics’ lessons, students become activists in their communities.” As Gewertz notes, “The name of this instructional model—’action civics’—signals its mission: not only to teach students how their government works but to harness that knowledge to launch them into collective action on issues they care about.”

This post is the first of three related to the topic of action civics. It is prompted, in part, by a recently released report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation. In their report, Thomas Lindsay and Lucy Meckler lay out important reasons for concern regarding action civics. They note:

In the course of this examination, we will come to see that, in the final count, the debate over Action Civics presents two contrasting views of democracy. Action Civics stems from a communitarian, participatory view of democracy, which finds its roots in Rousseau’s concept of the “general will.” At its philosophic roots, this agenda tends to distrust the checks on popular will offered by the representative democracy crafted by our founders and enshrined in the Constitution.

As this blog series will make clear, the proponents of action civics are clear in their intent—they hope to produce students who are more inclined toward activism. Importantly, the goal is not just to address social ills, but to address them through government action.

Many teachers throughout the country and within Missouri may have adopted an action civics pedagogy for teaching students because of the rich platitudes offered by its supporters. They may agree that students learn better by doing rather than by “sitting and getting” as is often common in social studies classrooms. The problem here, as I have alluded to in my intro, is that proponents of action civics and the teachers that implement this strategy in their classrooms were so concerned with whether they could teach students in this way that they did not stop to think whether they should.

Asking students to “become activists in their communities” or to advocate for collective government action before laying a foundation of understanding regarding political philosophy (including that of federalism and limited government) is a recipe for disaster. It leads to the types of outcomes we currently see in our political landscape where the very people advocating for the rights of one group are quick to trample on the rights of others. It drives students to see their actions as right and noble and those who oppose them as cruel and mean spirited.

Despite what proponents of action civics might say, it is not the duty of public schools to launch activists. Rather, it is the duty of public school teachers to help students understand this great American experiment in self-government. It is their duty to teach students about our institutions and their roles, as presented in our founding documents and the writings of the founding fathers. Furthermore, it is the duty of teachers to help students understand that people today have different views on the role of government and on the best policy solutions to the problems we face. If your goal is solely to create activists (and activists of a particular kind), you might skip some of these essential lessons.

The post Action Civics: Teaching Students to Become Activists (Part 1 of 3) appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As I’ve written before, the way that Medicaid is funded plays an important role in explaining the program’s growth. The status quo encourages states to spend as much as possible to receive more matching funds from the federal government. One of the best ways to improve the program and simultaneously contain costs would be to abandon the open-ended funding structure, and instead provide states with a yearly lump sum (block grant) payment of federal funding.

Show-Me Institute analysts have written about the benefits of Medicaid block grants for years, but until today no such proposal had ever received federal support. The new federal guidance indicates the current administration is serious about giving states more flexibility in deciding how to best administer their Medicaid programs. Unfortunately, there may be a serious weakness in the guidance provided today. It appears block grants may be limited to states that have already expanded Medicaid.

How the federal government treats Tennessee’s application will be telling. Tennessee, which has not expanded Medicaid, submitted a waiver application for block grants months ago. As Missouri has also not expanded Medicaid, the reception to Tennessee’s application should provide clues as to the likelihood of Missouri being able to successfully apply with a similar proposal.

Today’s guidance may offer a new path for Missouri’s policymakers who are serious about addressing Medicaid’s cost problem; the question is whether they will be ready to seize the opportunity.

The post New Path to Medicaid Block Grants appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The first proposal, brought forth in the Senate, would request a “global waiver” from the federal government for Missouri’s Medicaid funds. A global waiver would deliver federal funding to the state’s Medicaid program without all the strings attached. Such a dramatic change in policy would allow for enormous flexibility for state legislators to craft a Medicaid program that can best help our state’s most vulnerable citizens without the similarly enormous burden of federal regulations that currently bedevil the program.

This is how Fox 2 describes the idea:

A Senate committee heard testimony Wednesday on a bill that would direct the state Department of Social Services to seek a “global waiver” from federal Medicaid requirements to remake the state’s program.

Sponsoring Sen. David Sater says the intent is to ask the federal government to provide Missouri’s Medicaid money as a block grant, giving the state greater flexibility over how to spend it. Federal Medicaid dollars currently are provided on a matching basis for each state dollar that’s spent on health care services.

Translation: Missouri would decide how best to serve Missouri Medicaid patients. Crazy, right?

Now if the waiver sounds to our longtime readers a lot like the block grant idea we’ve written about in the past, that’s because functionally, it is. Our full proposal would take the grant money and split it into HSAs for low-income beneficiaries, empowering them to make decisions about their health while simultaneously providing incentive for participants to save money and shop for care. These ideas are largely captured in the second bill I referenced in the introduction. That HSA idea is, of course, just one of many potential reforms to the Medicaid program that could happen under a waiver or block grant, so Missouri’s plan could be different from plans agreed to in Florida, Illinois, or any other state. That’s a feature of the block grant, and given that a block grant proposal is currently being floated by the President, we may soon have the opportunity to see the laboratories of democracy at work in an effort to provide and better-tailor care in the Medicaid program.

But to get there? The doors to those labs need to be thrown open, and that’s where the waiver and block grants come in. I hope these ideas continue to work their way through the legislative process, as they are likely to be front and center during this legislative session—especially, as seems reasonably likely, if the federal government green-lights block granting of Medicaid from its end.

The post Medicaid Waiver Request A Great Idea appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In my remarks today, I hope to convince you of three things. First, the idea of the Common Core was noble, but misguided. Second, the Common Core State Standards will not significantly improve student achievement. And finally, the federal government created the controversy we have seen surrounding the Common Core over the past few years.

A Noble but Misguided Goal

The idea behind the Common Core is quite simple. Schools need standards because standards allow teachers to align the curriculum and allow teachers to see what they are to cover in each grade. I have been told many times that prior to schools adopting learning standards, it was not uncommon for students in the same grade in the same school to have radically different experiences depending on the teachers they had. Standards help alleviate that problem.

Following the infamous “A Nation at Risk Report” report of 1983, the standards movement was launched. This Reagan-administration report used alarming language to describe the nation’s education system. The authors of the report wrote:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. . . . We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.

The report fueled a desire to improve the quality of our education system. State officials wanted to keep a watchful eye on how schools were performing. To do that they needed tests, and to have tests, they needed standards on which to base them.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, states began creating their own standards-based accountability systems. By 2000, 39 states had accountability systems in place. After the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001, the remaining states were forced to follow suit. As a result, by the mid-2000s we had 50 different state standards and 50 different accountability systems.

These individual state standards created a problem. Students from families that moved from one state to another could miss entire topics if they were covered in one grade in one state and in a different grade in another. And, very importantly, the different tests did not allow us to compare one state to another because the accountability systems were different. In a state with very low standards a student might score “proficient,” but if he were in a state with very high standards he might score “basic.”

In reality, these were not problems created by having 50 state standards. They were problems that have always existed, and in many regards still exist. To be honest, these problems are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. I mean, would you go through all of the effort that the Common Core designers went through just to improve transparency across states? I wouldn’t, especially when we have the National Assessment of Educational progress, known as the nation’s report card, which already allows us to compare one state to another. The most valid reason to support the Common Core comes from the thought that these standards could improve student achievement for all students. This is where the supporters for Common Core were misguided. This is where the logic for Common Core falters, and this is what brings me to my second point: that Common Core will not improve educational outcomes for students.

Common Core Will Not Improve Educational Outcomes

Let me ask: How might a system of new standards improve educational outcomes for all students? As far as I can tell, there are three options:

• The standards could better align the curriculum.
• The standards could be more rigorous.
• Or, the standards could create a broader platform for collaboration.

Let’s examine each of these.

The standards could better align the curriculum

Remember, states have already developed standards and aligned curricula. We’d have to believe that the Common Core has somehow come up with a better way to do these things—that they have discovered the special sauce or that the designers have figured out the right progression of learning. Something tells me that is not the case. While the quality of education research is improving, there is simply not enough evidence to know if we should teach fractions in third grade or fourth, or whether we should introduce money in kindergarten or first grade. I recently sat on a committee to rewrite Missouri’s state standards. I can tell you, while the process is informed by research, it often comes down to educated guessing. The individuals making these guesses are indeed educated, but in the end, many of these decisions are completely subjective.

So what is the second option?

The standards could be simply be more rigorous

They could raise the level of expectations for students. After all, students rise to the level of expectation, don’t they? If this were true, we would expect students in states that previously had rigorous standards to perform better than students in states with weaker standards. In a study for the Brookings Institution, Tom Loveless examined this very issue. He found no relationship between the rigor of state standards and student performance on the NAEP. None. Another thing to consider is that ratings of the Common Core Standards by the Fordham Foundation, a group that has been very supportive of the effort, do not place Common Core at the top of the standards list. They are among the best according to Fordham, but in Math and Language arts, other standards were rated higher. If we believe that rigor or the quality of standards matter, then it puzzles me why supporters of national standards would be so willing to go to bat for Common Core. Why not simply adopt the superior Massachusetts standards?

The Common Core will not improve student achievement by better aligning curriculum, nor can we improve student learning simply by being more rigorous. What’s left?

A system of national standards could create a broader platform for collaboration

Before Common Core, textbook companies often designed curricula for more populous states like California and Texas. As a result, states found it difficult to get textbooks that aligned with their individual standards. Common Core helps alleviate this problem. Moreover, it allows teachers throughout the country to collaborate on lessons related to the standards. While this sounds great, planning on a substantial benefit from collaboration is misguided. If it were true that more opportunities for collaboration led to success, then we would expect to see more populous states—those that drive textbook production—to have an advantage. Not only would they have textbooks tailored to their curricula, but with a larger number of teachers, they would have greater opportunities for collaboration. Yet, we don’t see a California or Texas advantage.

In the face of the evidence, there is simply no logical model that can explain how a set of standards that simply tells teachers what to teach will improve student learning. At least not today.

To be clear: Standards are important, and evidence does show that the standards-based accountability movement has led to modest learning gains for students. It seems, however, that the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Schools have already aligned curricula, and we have already begun focusing on student outcomes. New standards may have some impact on the margins, but by themselves they cannot substantially improve student achievement.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive indictment of Common Core. I don’t believe Common Core will ruin our education system. I don’t believe it is some grand conspiracy to dumb down America. I simply believe it is bad policy.

But if Common Core is innocuous, then why are we devoting so much time to it? We are having this conversation today because promoters of Common Core oversold, and because the federal government overstepped. As is often the case, the actions of the federal government came with unintended consequences.

The Federal Government Created the Common Core Controversy

Common Core did not begin as a federal initiative. I hesitate to call this a “state-led” initiative, and it certainly wasn’t a grass roots initiative. It was instigated by the National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. These two trade organizations began the process late in George W. Bush’s administration, but the idea of national standards goes back even further, to his father’s administration. Early on in the development of the Common Core standards, some thought that the standards would be adopted by a handful of states; it was hoped that other states would adopt them voluntarily over time. That changed with federal involvement.

In 2009, President Obama launched his Race to the Top initiative, a competitive grant program that was part of the stimulus plan. States could compete for $4.35 billion dollars in prize money by proposing a series of reforms. This came at a time when states were feeling the pressure of the recession and could ill afford to pass up an opportunity for additional federal funding. One of the reforms supported in Race to the Top was the adoption of learning standards that were common to a majority of states—what would become Common Core.

As part of the first round of the Race to the Top process, states had to submit their applications (including a commitment to the Common Core standards) by January 19, 2010. The second round was June 1. But the final draft of the standards was not even released until June of 2010. In other words, the federal government encouraged states to commit to common standards before those standards were even finalized. Still, states jumped at the opportunity. By 2013, 45 states had adopted the standards. President Obama took credit for this in his State of the Union address.

At the same time, the Obama administration doubled down on support of Common Core by offering to waive certain No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements to states that adopted Common Core. Schools and states were finding it increasingly difficult to comply with various aspects of NCLB; that is, they had failed to meet the mandated 100 percent proficiency marks. States could avoid penalties by promoting education reform policies championed by the administration, one of which was common standards.

Whether you support federal involvement or not, it is difficult to deny that the actions of the U.S. Department of Education caused or at least contributed to the controversy surrounding Common Core. What might have been a coalition of states that grew and developed over time was catapulted into the national stage as a new and radical reform that many states adopted, if not against their will, then at least under duress.

Conclusion

While the motivation behind the Common Core standards was good, the outcomes—at least in terms of liberty—are not. Common Core moves control of one of the most important aspects of education—what students learn—further from students and parents, and it concentrates power at the federal level. As Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman once said, “Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.” The Common Core standards reduce individual liberty and academic freedom for states, teachers, and students. They nullify the great advantage of individual states—the ability to act as laboratories that allow us to evaluate different systems to see what works best—in favor of a monolithic approach that stifles innovation. Ultimately, the Common Core movement is an expression of the flawed mindset that we can mandate and orchestrate improved student achievement through centralized control. 

The post A Well Intentioned Disaster: A Presentation on the Merits of Common Core State Standards appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• The expansion is not a “jobs program.” It is a mortgage imposed on the future incomes of our children and grandchildren to provide services today that we cannot afford. If the creation or expansion of an entitlement is important enough to pursue, it should be paid out of today’s dollars, not tomorrow’s.
• The expansion is not funded. The expansion alone would add nearly $3 billion in new costs to Missouri’s annual budgets over the next decade. I have not seen a plan to address that cost. If the absence of a payment plan is not enough of a reason for concern, what happens if future federal budgets, already bathed in the red ink of debt, cause the Feds to dial back their funding on the expansion — raising the state costs further by effectively forcing states to pick up that slack?
• No, other states would not “get Missouri’s money.” This is among the more remarkable, and incorrect, claims. Expansion funds are distributed based on enrollment, not on how much Medicaid money is “in the pot” and how many states are drawing on it. If only one state adopted the Medicaid expansion, that state would not receive the funding of the other 49 states. Nor would two states split the Medicaid expansion funding of the other 48 states. And so on.
• Is Missouri a government that sometimes provides health services, or a health service provider that sometimes governs? If the state expands Medicaid, Missouri’s Medicaid program is projected to eat up 38 percent of the state’s entire budget. Is this what we want the Show-Me State to be reduced to? A mere vessel of the federal government through which federal Medicaid prerogatives are promoted and administered?
• The expansion would reinforce an emerging subsidiary relationship between the state and the federal government. Moody’s has already downgraded Missouri’s credit outlook because the state already relies heavily on federal funding, and will rely even more heavily on it if the state expands Medicaid. Is that the sort of relationship the state wants to promote? Shouldn’t the state want to inoculate itself from the consequences of the federal government’s spending binge?

While supporters of the Medicaid expansion blithely send legislators Beyoncé Knowles Valentine’s Day cards in an attempt to coax policymakers into blowing a multi-billion dollar hole in the state’s budgets, it is time for serious policymakers to get serious about this issue. If the Missouri Legislature is going to engage Medicaid this session, it should be to fix what we already have rather than to spend what we do not.

The post The Medicaid Expansion Issue, Bullet-Pointed appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Under the federal health care law, states face a Nov. 16 deadline to submit blueprints to the federal government if they want to run their own health insurance exchanges when the online shopping sites are due to open in 2014. If states don’t set up their own sites, the federal government will run one for them.

Nixon said he would prefer Missouri run its own insurance exchange. But that’s not possible, at least not at this point. Voters on Tuesday passed a ballot measure barring the governor from taking steps to establish a state-run insurance exchange without legislative approval. The Legislature has not granted its approval. And it’s not scheduled to be in session until January, meaning lawmakers could not meet the Nov. 16 deadline even if they wanted to do so.

It is a good thing voters explicitly blocked the governor from instituting the exchange, given the governor’s statements. As the news report notes, just days ago Missourians resoundingly passed Proposition E, which prohibited the creation of a health insurance exchange without voter or legislative approval. Given the governor’s position in favor of the state exchange and the timing of his announcement, it appears he may have considered acting unilaterally to implement the exchange if the avenue was still available.

Why is the state-run vs. federally-run exchange issue important? As I said when I wrote about Oklahoma’s challenge to the ACA:

Many employers under the ACA can be fined/taxed if they do not provide health insurance to individuals who qualify for the federal government’s subsidies. However, if a state does not build its own exchange, then no employee would qualify for the subsidy, and therefore employers in the state would not be subject to the tax because none of their employees would meet the criteria set out in the law.

No state exchange? Then the law’s text suggests that there would be no employer penalty.

More to the point, a state-created exchange does not mean an exchange effectively run by the state; such exchanges will still have to comply with the rules the federal government imposes, as Christine Herrera and I explained earlier this year in an editorial in the Southeast Missourian.

The theory of a state-run exchange, designed to navigate and subsidize the purchase of health insurance, is simply that — a theory. Rules that officials in Washington issued to implement the law say that every detail of Missouri’s exchange must have the approval of federal bureaucrats.

And because federal grants and subsidies will flow through state-based exchanges, Washington will always be able to control Missouri’s exchange through ongoing regulation. This “my house, my rules” scenario underscores the new parent-child dynamic occurring between Washington, D.C., and the states, and the Missouri Senate was right to reject the governor’s ability to implement an exchange.

I support returning greater power to the states, which are often closer to the governed and better engaged with their problems. Put simply, a state-based exchange under the ACA is, for all intents and purposes, a federal exchange, effectively controlled by the federal government and designed to implement federal policy. The governor is right to prefer more localized solutions to big federal government solutions. Unfortunately, a state-based exchange does not further that objective.

The post Nixon: Missouri Will Not Implement Health Insurance Exchange By Federal Deadline appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Supporters of the exchange claim they will lose their chance to create a Missouri-centric mechanism to provide affordable health coverage to the uninsured. But Missouri lost that chance nearly two years ago, when the federal health bill was signed into law.

The theory of a state-run exchange, designed to navigate and subsidize the purchase of health insurance, is simply that — a theory. Rules that officials in Washington issued to implement the law say that every detail of Missouri’s exchange must have the approval of federal bureaucrats.

And because federal grants and subsidies will flow through state-based exchanges, Washington will always be able to control Missouri’s exchange through ongoing regulation. This “my house, my rules” scenario underscores the new parent-child dynamic occurring between Washington, D.C., and the states, and the Missouri Senate was right to reject the governor’s ability to implement an exchange.

But if Missouri does not set up its own exchange, won’t the federal government do it for the state? The law says yes, but in reality, it is unclear. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is still grappling with recent findings that the law does not technically provide any money to set up a federal exchange, nor does it offer subsidies to people buying insurance in the federal exchange.

Even if the glitches get worked out, it is doubtful that a federal exchange will be up and running by the 2014 deadline. To date, HHS has only doled out $150 million in contracts to build a federal exchange — a system tasked with coordinating the eligibility, subsidies, premiums, and benefits for tens of millions of people who will be forced to purchase health insurance thanks to the individual mandate. That is a tall order.

Meanwhile, we do not know just how much a state-based exchange will actually cost Missouri. The federal government is awarding grants to set up state exchanges, but that money runs out in 2014. Oregon has imposed new taxes on health insurance premiums to fund its exchange once the federal money dries up, and other states are considering similar measures. Indeed, research from the Mercatus Center suggests that every dollar of temporary federal grants leads to 40 cents of state and local tax increases.

Besides, federal money is not free — everyone pays federal, state, and local taxes, and increased federal spending on exchanges means more out of taxpayers’ pockets. In December, the New Hampshire House announced that it will return $333,000 in federal exchange funds to “pay down our national debt, which is a far better use of these funds than building healthcare bureaucracies here.”

Missouri has time to figure out how, or if, it wants to set up a health insurance exchange. Nationally, only 17 states have acted to establish exchanges — and many of those states have made only nominal progress in setting them up. In response, the federal government has delayed implementation timelines, extended grant deadlines, and even offered a “hybrid” model through which states and the federal government can share in exchange governance.

A lot can happen in the next year, with the upcoming Supreme Court decision on the federal health law, the 2012 elections, and the still-unfinished exchange regulations from HHS. Kudos to the Missouri Senate for blocking Gov. Nixon’s rush to act.

Patrick Ishmael is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

Christie Herrera is director of the Health and Human Services Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonpartisan association of conservative state lawmakers.

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The idea has almost innumerable applications, but the most relevant example for Missourians today is the federal health care reform bill. Missourians overwhelmingly rejected the portion of the law requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance when they voted for Proposition C in August. However, barring repeal (effectively impossible) or a court injunction (more likely, especially if more attorneys general, like Missouri’s Chris Koster, join the pending lawsuit on the matter), we will all be forced to participate in a program that most of us dislike.

If decisions about health care policy were left up to the states, we could have a multitude of systems, which would better reflect the wishes of individual voters and generate more information about which policies work best. Some politicians in Vermont, including the new governor, have floated the idea of creating a single-payer health care system for the state. I think that’s a terrible policy because it removes competition from the system, and along with it any incentive to perform better-quality work for less money, but it is certainly within Vermont’s rights under the Constitution to try it. If the program succeeds, great. If it fails, we can all learn a valuable lesson and it will be far easier to change a state law than federal law.

Of course, the best system would be no system at all: Allow all individuals to decide what kind of health care plan they want. (We could design a health insurance voucher program for those without the means to pay for it on their own. This would allow them to choose among a number of options instead of being forced into a government program.) Government rules are one-size-fits-all by nature, but each person has different needs and wants. We are happiest when we can pursue those goals as we see fit.

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Early in this year’s legislative session, members of the General Assembly asked me to offer testimony on the Health Care Freedom Act, which was proposed as a constitutional amendment that would recognize the fundamental right of citizens of Missouri to decide for themselves how they will pay for their health care, and that no government could rightfully interfere with that decision. In my testimony, I pointed out that if courts decided that nothing in the U.S. Constitution prevented the government from mandating the purchase of government-approved insurance policies, a constitutional amendment of the sort contemplated in the Health Care Freedom Act could offer a legal “Hail Mary” — a last line of defense that might prevent further congressional intrusion into citizens’ lives.

Despite overwhelming support in both the House and Senate, the Missouri General Assembly did not agree to let citizens vote on this constitutional amendment. Instead, the legislature placed the original bill’s language into House Bill 1764, which would allow voters an August referendum on adopting a new statute. Many of the legislators and citizen groups who had worked to pass the original bill are now hailing the passage of HB 1764, implying that if the people vote to adopt this statute, it will have the same effect as the proposed constitutional amendment might have. Unfortunately, this is simply not true. Missouri voters may well use this referendum as a political statement through which they can express their opinions about the federal health care reform law, but the text that might have been legally useful as a constitutional amendment will have zero legal effect as a statute.

The text that will be presented at the referendum states, in part: “No law or rule shall compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system.” A court called upon to evaluate whether this provision would be effective against any federal enforcement of the health insurance mandate will first point out that because the language makes no reference to any particular government, it must be assumed to apply only to law- or rule-making subdivisions of the state of Missouri. Not only is it virtually unheard of (and generally futile) for a state statute to attempt to bind the federal government or one of its agencies, the plain text of the bill says nothing to suggest that is its purpose. A court looking at this provision as a statute will almost certainly end its analysis there.

However, even if the court infers that the General Assembly intended to prevent the enforcement of certain federal laws, the statute will fail. In order for the Health Care Freedom Act to have any hope of being effective, it would have to give citizens the basis to argue that health care freedom is a fundamental right beyond any government’s rightful authority to transgress. If the citizen could make that argument, there would be a very slight chance that the U.S. Supreme Court might consider such a fundamental right sufficient to prevent the government from punishing those who chose not to abide by the individual insurance mandate. A statute, however, is not the mechanism by with citizens establish fundamental rights or liberties — they put those in their constitutions, where they are insulated from repeal or avoidance by future legislation. Thus, even if HB 1764 had purported to establish a fundamental right or liberty, courts would have been unlikely to take them seriously. It just so happens that HB 1764 does not even make such an effort, further diminishing any legal usefulness it otherwise might have had.

To be clear, I do not mean to suggest that proponents of the Health Care Freedom Act are intentionally misleading people as to the likely effect of HB 1764. But Missouri’s citizens deserve to know that the bill and the upcoming referendum it authorizes can only be considered a political statement. Even if the people adopt this statute at the August referendum, their rights and liberties will be no more secure than if the bill had been defeated.

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A requirement tucked into the massive U.S health care bill will make calorie counts impossible for thousands of restaurants to hide and difficult for consumers to ignore.

I’m following it until I get to the words “difficult for consumers to ignore.” There’s evidence that consumers are pretty good at ignoring the numbers on the menu. For example, this research on New York City’s calorie count mandate found that less than a third of consumers reported taking the newly posted nutritional information into account when they ordered. When the researchers examined caloric data from fast food sales before and after the change in policy, they found no decrease in calories purchased. (The AP story does mention this study a couple of paragraphs from the end.)

Another study that looked at data from Starbucks alone found a small decrease in purchased calories in food, but no change in purchased calories in beverages — the main attraction at Starbucks. People who headed over to Starbucks in search of the high-calorie drinks for which it’s known didn’t suddenly change their minds when they read the calorie counts.

The calorie count mandate won’t make the population healthier, because people are good are ignoring numbers they don’t want to see. You can plaster nutritional data all over a restaurant, but if people aren’t interested, they’ll tune it out.

It’s unfortunate that the federal government imposed this mandate on all states. States like Missouri should be free to weigh the evidence from places that have imposed mandates and come to their own determinations on calorie-posting policy.

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First, they’re good, solid — indeed very ambitious — academic standards for primary and secondary schooling, at least in the two essential subjects of English and math. Students who attained them would be better off — readier for college, readier to get good jobs, readier to compete in the global economy — than most are today.

Students might be better prepared if they attained these standards, but it’s not clear that adopting the standards would achieve that result. Adopting standards on paper doesn’t, by itself, bring students up to a high academic level. In fact, the more ambitious the standards are, the less likely it is that U.S. students could meet them unless more significant changes were made to the public school system.

Second, they respect basic skills, mathematical computation, the conventions of the English language, good literature, and America’s founding documents.

This is faint praise. It would be pretty pathetic if the standards made fun of America’s founding documents. Nor is this a reason for states to agree to the standards. Anyone can have respect for basic skills and literature without uniform standards.

Third, they emerged not from the federal government but from a voluntary coming together of (most) states, and the states’ decision whether or not to adopt them will remain voluntary. Each state will determine whether the new standards represent an improvement over what it’s now using.

If states fail to adopt the standards, they lose their chance to receive some kinds of federal funding. The federal government approves of these standards and is using its power to get states to agree to them. That’s enough evidence that the federal government is imposing the standards on states. Where the standards originally “emerged” from is irrelevant.

Fourth, they do not represent a national curriculum — though to gain traction they’ll need to be joined by solid curricula, effective instruction, and quality testing.

In other words, if states adopt the standards, a national curriculum is sure to follow. For what would be the point of standards that don’t “gain traction”?

Fifth, one little-noted benefit of properly implemented common standards is a better-functioning education marketplace, in which parents will be able to make choices about schools on the basis of more accurate information about how school A’s performance compares with that of school B — not just within communities and states but also when considering a move from state to state. Entrepreneurial school operators (such as KIPP and Edison) will also be better able to gauge and manage school performance in locations across the land.

Give me a break. It’s the old “standards will help the charter schools” argument. I don’t know how standards alone could give people more information about their limited educational choices — unless states also agreed to tests that match the standards, and then published the scores. Sounds like No Child Left Behind all over again.

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If approved by the legislature, the proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting Missourians from being compelled to participate in any health care system would go to a vote of the people. HJR 48, 50 & 57 is half-way there. The House voted 109-to-46 in favor and sent it to the Senate.

Setting aside for the moment the specific content of the amendment, it is great to see Missouri and other states attempting to use the nearly forgotten tools of interposition and nullification to stop the federal government from abusing its powers. Of course, these are just tools that can be used for good (such as when Wisconsin nullified the Fugitive Slave Act in the 1850s) or ill (such as George Wallace attempting to preserve segregation). However, all else being equal, the more a political system is localized, the less dysfunctional it is likely to be, because the politicians are not as removed from the people. Consequently, anything that takes power away from the federal government and gives it to the states, or from the states to the counties and municipalities, or from the municipalities to the neighborhoods and individuals, should, as a general rule, be applauded.

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While adopting the standards would be voluntary, the Obama administration has said that it intends to withhold millions of dollars in grants for low-income students in states that refuse to join the effort — regardless of the quality of their existing standards.

The administration also says states that embrace the standards will have a better chance of receiving potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in its “Race to the Top’’ competition, which rewards education innovation.

Missouri’s standards are generally not considered to be at the level of Massachusetts’, so Missouri could probably improve its standards somewhat by agreeing to the Common Core Standards. But why should Missouri — or any state — adopt the Common Core Standards when it could do better by emulating Massachusetts or California?

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The urban farmer seemed out of place, because he made little effort to connect his locavore ideology to the problem of childhood weight gain. Of course, children will be healthier if they eat lots of fruits and vegetables, but there’s no reason those fruits and vegetables have to be grown in their cities instead of, say, shipped in from a field in California. The farmer railed against buying food from foreign countries — which, again, is no reason to avoid food from California, even if you accept his protectionist premise. Then he concluded with a few more off-topic pronouncements, including, “When farmers are in business, schools are out,” which sounds to me like an argument against relying on local food for children’s nutrition, and a recommendation that cities grow food in vacant buildings. (Not vacant lots, vacant buildings.)

The mayor of Hernando, Miss., offered more relevant comments, although he too gave the obligatory nods to farmers’ markets and urban gardens. He had a lot of ideas about things cities can do to invite physical activity, such as repairing sidewalks and building playgrounds. The mayor’s emphasis on local policies rather than federal mandates was refreshing. (You see, I have local biases of my own.) And I appreciated it when he said that government should not tell people to be healthy because “that’s a private decision.”

The mayor of Somerville, Mass., advocated a more invasive approach for government. His “Shape Up” campaign goes so far as to place a public stamp of approval on certain menu items at restaurants. Even more troubling is the mayor’s declaration, “The healthy choice must be the easy choice.” This recalls the attitude expressed by a student in Clayton when she spoke in support of the proposed smoking ban: If a choice is good, the city should ensure that it is also easy and fun. In other words, you shouldn’t have to make any sacrifices or be at all inconvenienced when you do the right thing — not if the government can help it. Take that way of thinking just a tiny step further, and the government will be making your choices for you.

While most of the speakers had creative plans for cities and schools, none of them explained why the federal government should play a role or why change couldn’t come from the ground up. The first lady emphasized that her campaign won’t try to impose Washington’s vision on everyone, but it’s hard to believe that when she says she’d like to turn convenience stores into produce markets.

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