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Press Release: GOP budget shoves schools to back of the line, shuts out new jobs

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives today passed a proposed state operating budget for the 2015 fiscal year that puts local public schools at the back of the line for state funding and outright rejects $1.7 billion in federal funding that would create at least 24,000 new jobs, provide a massive boost to Missouri’s economy and protect rural hospitals.

For the current fiscal year, state funding for local public school districts is about $620 million below what state law says it should be. As a part of a two-year plan to achieve full funding of public education, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon in January proposed providing K-12 schools with a $278 million increase in the upcoming state budget, which begins July 1.

The House Republican budget plan, however, only provides a base increase of $122 million. Schools wouldn’t receive the remaining $156 million requested by the governor until the end of the fiscal year, after every other expense of state government has received its designated funding.

“The House Republican budget shoves local schools to the back of the line for state funding,” said House Minority Leader Jake Hummel, D-St. Louis. “Education is supposed to be a top priority, not dead last.”

The House Republican budget takes a similar approach with higher education funding, providing public colleges and universities a base increase that will be distributed over the course of the fiscal year, with additional funds legislatively withheld until the end of the year.

For the second straight year, the Republican budget omits $1.7 billion in federal dollars to expand the state’s Medicaid eligibility limit to 138 percent of the federal poverty level – an annual income of $32,500 for a family of four or $15,856 for an individual — with no net cost to state taxpayers. Implementing the expansion would create an estimated 24,000 jobs in the state in the health care field alone.

As a direct result of the failure to implement the expansion last year, Missouri hospitals have eliminated nearly 1,000 full-time jobs and have left about 2,200 more positions vacant in just the last six months, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

“Out of pure political spite, House Republicans are saying ‘no’ to job creation and ‘yes’ to job elimination,” said Assistant House Minority Leader Gail McCann Beatty, D-Kansas City. “Their position defies simple common sense.