Icet shows his hand

GOP Budget Chair Allen Icet (R-Wildwood) doesn't like the new proposal to provide health care to 34,000 uninsured Missourians, which won't cost the state a dollar. But he hasn't been able to come up with a plausible reason for his opposition yet, except for the fact that Governor Nixon might someday, in a completely unrelated, hypothetical, yet-to-be-defined proposal, suggest a different, unrelated thing that doesn't affect this current proposal in any way.

No joke -- here's how Icet explained his reluctance to support the plan:

"If this is the only thing the governor wants to do, okay, we may be able to talk about [it], but I'd be surprised if the governor doesn't come back next year and say, okay, I got, whatever this is, the first step for 2010, for 2011, here's the second step."

That's it. He doesn't oppose the plan because it will cost the state money (it won't). He doesn't oppose the plan because hospitals hate it (they're on board). He just opposes it because someday something else might happen that doesn't really have anything to do with this proposal.

It almost makes you wonder if Icet and the GOP leadership are way more interested in their partisan scorecard than actually supporting their struggling constituents.