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Senators are not inherently wiser, or more patient, or more knowledgeable than their House counterparts. In a tweet Friday, state Sen. Lauren Arthur of Kansas City, a Democrat, defended the institution. “The Senate was designed to make it difficult to pass legislation,” she said.

Yet Arthur and her colleagues were unable to prevent the grotesque violation of Kansas Citians’ rights when the General Assembly imposed a 25% floor on police spending in its final day.

If your only goal is to prevent bad stuff, rather than pursue good stuff, failure can resemble success. But it’s still failure. [Emphasis mine]

Nebraska has a one-house state legislature. Perhaps the people skilled at gathering petition signatures can pursue a smaller Missouri General Assembly in 2023.

The Star is right about the philosophical importance of pursuing, and following through on “good stuff,” though I might disagree about what that “good stuff” would be. But for example, high among the alleged priorities of the state Senate leadership was passing a Parents’ Bill of Rights, and that priority was decidedly and bizarrely ignored throughout the session.

The Senate’s bias against its own priorities—debating key legislation last rather than first, and thus always risking its failure—isn’t new. Missouri voters have sent supermajorities to the House and Senate for a reason; it is not reasonable for the legislature to fail so emphatically and so often in enacting the reforms their constituents demand. In that, I agree with the Star.

Now, I’m not prepared to agree with the Star that Missouri should abolish the Senate entirely and adopt Nebraska’s unicameral legislature. But get back to me next year; maybe another year of failure will persuade me.

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A previous question motion, or “PQ,” allows for a vote on a bill or amendment if a majority of the chamber chooses, even if a filibuster is ongoing. The details of the motion are laid out in Rule 84 of the Rules of the Senate, which describes the PQ as follows: 

The previous question shall be in this form: “Shall the main question be now put?”. It shall only be admitted on written demand of five senators, and sustained by a vote of a majority of the senators elected, and in effect shall be put without debate, and bring the senate to direct vote upon a motion to commit, if such motion shall have been made; and if this motion does not prevail, then upon amendments, and then upon the main question. On demand for the previous question, a call of the senate shall be in order, but after a majority of the senators elected have sustained such a motion, no call shall be in order prior to the decision on the main question.

Translation? Five senators can initiate the PQ, and a majority of Senators can end a filibuster. Why Senators would hesitate to call a PQ isn’t necessarily captured in the rules, of course, and as we’ve seen in previous sessions, spurned Senators can grind the chamber to a halt by opposing motions that require unanimous consent or filibustering other legislation. This eats up time for other legislative priorities, which is essentially the point and central to the threat.

But the PQ shouldn’t be considered in a vacuum or treated as if it were dictated by immutable laws of Senatorial physics. Whereas the filibuster and the PQ are well within the realm of Senate tradition, so too are rules changes that would head off the sort of obstruction that has dissuaded previous sessions from appropriately using the PQ motion; after all, if rule changes were not part of Senatorial tradition, then there wouldn’t be rules explicitly allowing for changing Senate rules. “Tradition,” as it turns out, is both a shield and a sword, and legislators obstructing reform need to realize the “tradition” argument cuts the other way as well.

The real question, then, isn’t whether the PQ and related rule changes are consistent with Senate tradition—they are—but whether Senate leadership has the courage to break the reform logjam. Time will tell, but time is running out.

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It is important that Missouri maintain good roads and bridges. That is why I support transportation infrastructure spending. SJR 16 was an attempt to do that. However, my colleague, Policy Analyst David Stokes, and I did have misgivings about the proposal. Namely, we thought raising the sales tax to finance transportation infrastructure was not the right way to go.

Raising the sales tax to pay for transportation infrastructure would spread the burden of financing this spending evenly between those who frequently use roads and bridges and those who rarely use them. I don’t think that people who walk to work should have to pay the same amount for road maintenance as those who commute an hour each way.

When possible, and in the case of transportation funding it is possible, the external public costs should be internalized (i.e., linked to those who use the goods). That is why David and I support dedicated funding mechanisms for road construction and maintenance, such as tolling and increased gas taxes. Tolling isn’t a viable option for all of our transportation needs, but it has worked for the Lake Ozark Community Bridge and it can work for other projects. Increasing the gas tax instead of the sales tax would more closely align the act of using the road, bridge, or port, to those who pay for it.

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