Friday Wrap-Up: The good, bad and ugly

Good: Missouri's hospitals and Gov. Nixon announced a plan to provide health care for almost 35,000 uninsured residents -- at no cost to the state.

• Hospitals agreed to increase their tax payments to qualify for more federal Medicaid money, allowing 34,800 currently uninsured Missourians to receive coverage.
• The plan would cost the state zero dollars.
• The hospitals are on board because it will save them money in the long run. The president of the Hospital Association says the proposal is "an opportunity we can't afford to miss."
• The Post-Dispatch says the plan is "good for poor, uninsured parents [and] it helps to create jobs."

Bad: Predictably, GOP leaders lined up against the health care plan.

• Why? Because, um, the hospitals don't like it, there are still other uninsured people, it costs the state money, it makes them look bad.
• GOP Budget Chair Allen Icet was really annoyed with Rep. Rachel Bringer for sponsoring an amendment to enact the plan. So like any mature adult, he decided that pettiness was the best response. 

Also Bad: The budget put forward by House Republicans made it out of committee.

• The House Republicans' budget made it out of committee, and will be heard on the floor when legislators return from Spring Break.
• The KC Star: "Republicans have continued their pattern of making low-income and disadvantaged Missourians bear the brunt of the state’s fiscal difficulties."
• The Post-Dispatch: Republicans' "ideology and politics could cost poor, working parents a chance to get health care that they desperately need."

Ugly: House Republicans were exposed for their bogus promises about using federal recovery money.

• Republicans have been promising for weeks that they wouldn't use any stimulus money for ongoing expenses.
• Their claim is false. And they knew it.
• Not just a little false. A lot false.
• Speaker Ron Richard didn't get the memo that they'd been caught -- he repeated the same bogus claim yesterday, and had to be corrected by House Budget Chair Allen Icet. Oops! 
• In Richard's defense, Icet had been making the same claim until he got caught.

Other notes:

• President Obama lifted federal restrictions on stem cell research.
• Rep. Cynthia Davis joined Rep. Tim Jones in a lawsuit seeking to prove that Pres. Obama is actually an Indonesian man named Barry Seotoro.
• Sarah Steelman is hoping the DC insiders will look past her demagoguing and finance her Senate campaign.
• After calling Steelman "dishonest and hypocritical", Roy Blunt took the week off.
• Fans of the tractor parade have friends in the Capitol.
• Rep. Mark Parkinson is one classy son of gun.
• Peter Kinder's website is operational once again.
• Twitter has taken off with the Missouri press corps.
• kU was embarrassed by Baylor.
• Jim Cramer was embarrassed on the Daily Show: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
• Seriously, you need to watch the Cramer interview.
• Go Tigers!