Andrew Koenig

From the Missouri News Horizon: "An amendment that would require presidential candidates to present proof of natural born citizenship was trimmed from an omnibus election law reform bill. The amendment was removed, along with several others, by a joint conference committee in hopes that the final bill can pass by the end of the legislative session on Friday."

It's great to see reasonable people prevail on this matter, especially given the many birther and birther-curious legislators in the General Assembly.

The Missouri House passed legislation "relaxing" rules for contractors removing lead-based paint Thursday, apparently unconcerned about the safety of those workers and the people around them. 

Who pushed the bill?  Rep. Kurt Bahr (R-O'Fallon), a painting contractor; Rep. Andrew Koenig (R-Winchester), the owner of a painting company; and Rep. Rick Brattin (R-Harrisonville) a contractor who wants fewer rules on how he deals with lead paint. 

Kurt Bahr is bored with actual issues and legislation already

Representatives Kurt Bahr (R-St. Charles), Andrew Koenig (R-Winchester), Shane Schoeller (R-Willard), Melissa Leach (R-Springfield), Kathie Conway (R-St. Charles) and Thomas Long (R-Battlefield) are sponsoring legislation (HB1010) to make it a crime -- a crime!-- when any federal or state employee "enforces or attempts to enforces" any part of the federal health care reform law. 

From the bill as proposed:

4. Any official, agent, or employee of the United States government or any employee of a corporation providing services to the United States government that enforces or attempts to enforce an act, order, law, statute, rule, or regulation of the government of the United States in violation of this section is guilty of a class D felony.

5. Any public officer or employee of this state that enforces or attempts to enforce an act, order, law, statute, rule, or regulation of the government of the United States in violation of this section is guilty of a class A misdemeanor.

Orly Taitz would be proud

The Missouri General Assembly continued its proud tradition today of teasing and supporting the completely insane right-wing conspiracy that President Barack Obama is actually a illegal Kenyan immigrant. 

As summarized by the Star's Jason Noble:

HOUSE BILL 283: RETURN OF THE BIRTHERS!

Questions apparently remain about President Barack Obama‘s citizenship and eligibility for the office he’s held for the last 25 months.

That was the clearest conclusion from this morning’s hearing on House Bill 283, which would require the Missouri Secretary of State to verify the citizenship of all presidential and vice presidential candidates appearing on the state’s ballots.

The News-Leader reports that bill sponsor Lyle Rowland  (R-Cedarcreek) couldn't say "how many times a non-citizen had been on the ballot as a presidential or vice presidential candidate."    A few weeks ago, Rowland told Politico that "we have problems with illegal immigrants. And if something were to happen where one of them became popular with the people, we need documents proving if they are a citizen."

Sadly, there is no space between the fringe and mainstream GOP on this issue in Missouri.  Majority Floor Leader Tim Jones and then-Rep. Cynthia Davis sued a certain president in 2009 with Orly Taitz, alleging that he was an illegal Kenyan immigrant who happened to become popular with the people. Sen. Roy Blunt may be the highest ranking birther-curious official in the country; he declared during his Senate campaign that birthers were asking "legitimate" questions about Obama's birth records, and scolded journalists in Southwest Missouri for lacking the "capacity to talk about that [Obama's citizenship] in a legitimate way."

The Columbia Daily Tribune's story on yesterday's committee vote to replace the state's income tax with a much higher and more expansive sales tax has more bad news for Rex Sinquefield's ballot initiatives.  While the committee voted along party lines to pass legislation (HJR8) sponsored by Rep. Andrew Koenig's(R-Winchester) -- despite open concerns about how it will wreak havoc on the state budget -- committee chairman Doug Funderburk (R-St. Peters) said that Sinquefield's ballot initiatives would be the wrong way to overhaul Missouri's tax code. 

Funderburk...said he wants the General Assembly, rather than an initiative campaign, to ask voters to implement the tax overhaul.

“I want to do my job,” he said. If Rex Sinquefield “thinks he needs to do my job, it makes me feel like I didn’t do it.”

Rep. Andrew Koenig (R-Koenig) presented his version of the Rex Sinquefield sales tax hike in a House Committee this morning, professing to care about whether or not his plan would be revenue neutral (i.e., bring in as much revenue with a higher, broader sales tax as is produced now by the corporate and income taxes he wants to eliminate).

Yet Koenig, Sinquefield and the others on Rex's payroll continue to insist on a seven percent cap on the state sales tax rate, even though nonpartisan and independent analyses have show that such a cap would be devastating to state revenues.

It's no longer a matter of real debate:

• The Joint Committee on Tax Policy evaluated a Senate "fair tax" proposal last year, and found that the state sales tax rate would have to be 7.56%-7.94% to be revenue neutral, and at least 10% if the state created a rebate/prebate program.  This was reported by the News-Leader's Roseann Moring as recently as December 18, and the Committee's analysis can be read here.
    
• Jim Moody, a lobbyist who used to be Governor John Ashcroft's Commissioner of Administration, looked at the numbers and found that the plans put forward by Sinquefield would "bankrupt the state, or in the alternative, bankrupt the poor and the working lower and middle income classes..." 
   
• GOP gubernatorial candidate Peter Kinder cited Moody's analysis as one of the reasons why he's flip-flopped on the whole issue.
    
• Research conducted by the Missouri Budget Project and Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy determined that the sales tax rate with a prebate program would need to be close to 11% to be revenue neutral.  Their study, published in February 2010, may be found here, and you can read testimony from the ITEP submitted to the Senate in January 2010  here.
    
• The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued a report in September stating that Missouri would have to raise its sales tax rate to 11 percent or more under the 2010 proposals to replace lost revenue from the personal and corporate income taxes and franchise taxes.
    
• Senate President Pro Tem Rob Mayer (R-Dexter) has acknowledged that seven percent is not realistic.

Randy Turner speaks the truth in this week's column about Missouri Republicans' inability to move beyond conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's birth certificate: 

At a time when Missourians are suffering due to the continuing harmful effects of a downward-spiraling economy, the last thing we need to see is our legislators pandering to the extreme fringes of their constituency. Put Missourians back to work and put the birthers back under the baseboards where they belong.

This year's birther adventure comes in the form of HB 283, sponsored by Lyle Rowland (R-Cedarcreek) and co-sponsored by Mike Kelley (R-Lamar), Kevin Elmer (R-Nixa), Don Wells (R-Kwik Kash), Darrell Pollack (R-Lebanon), Don Phillips (R-Kimberling City), Shane Schoeller (R-Willard), Barney Fisher (R-Richards), Melissa Leach (R-Springfield), Stanley Cox (R-Sedalia), Tom Loehner (R-Koeltztown), Dave Hinson (R-St. Clair), Lindell Shumake (R-Hannibal), Jason Smith (R-Salem), Andrew Koenig (R-Winchester) and Diane Franklin (R-Camdenton).

From the Department of Bill Summaries That Don't Summarize What This Bill Is Actually About:

HB195 Koenig, Andrew
Requires the State Board of Education and other public school entities to encourage students to explore scientific questions and to allow the teaching of scientific theories of biological or chemical evolution

For reasons I won't pretend to understand, twelve Republican state representatives voted against extended unemployment benefits yesterday (HB 1544).

The legislation sponsored by Rep. Barney Fisher (R-Richards) passed 143-12, and will allow more than 62,000 Missourians to receive extended unemployment benefit, and not cost the state a dime.

Jason Brown, birther Cynthia Davis, birther Ed Emery, Doug Ervin, birther Tim Jones, Andrew Koenig, Will Kraus, Mike Leara, Brian Nieves, Mark Parkinson, Tom Self and Bryan Stevenson all opposed the extension.