Missouri's Most Powerful Man Takes A Victory Lap: "We Were Right, As Usual... As Usual, I Was Right."

Speaker Ron Richard has a message for all the haters who didn't like the way he blocked a House vote on autism legislation last year: Kiss his grits.

Speaking Friday with The Globe, The Most Powerful Man in Missouri cited to the recently-passed autism insurance legislation (HB1311) as evidence that he has been on the right side of the debate all along. "We were right, as usual. The House.  As usual, I was right,"  he says. 

Last year, there was a consensus that something should have been done. There wasn't a consensus in the House, and I was somewhat criticized throughout the state that I just didn't ram something through.

It's always been my goal, is to, to work through the process and make sure that we can get, number one, 82 votes, and make sure that we can get something that go through the Senate and get signed.

And, we had a number of communities working against that -- insurance community and what have you.

As it worked through, I got Kevin Wilson, one of my more respected regional leaders from Neosho, put together a program working from last summer all the way up to this year.  Put together a program. It passed in really good shape out the House.  It's on it's way to the Senate. The Senate believed that they had the plan, but they can't get it out of their body.

So it looks like we were right, as usual. The House.  As usual, I was right.

And our program is probably gonna be what is gonna be the model. And we're looking for, get the plan in the Senate, then go to conference and work out some differences.

Wrong. Richard was not criticized because he "didn't ram something through."  He was criticized because he didn't allow a vote on legislation that would have passed without his personal efforts to kill the bill.

The 2009 bill was supported by an overwhelming majority in the Senate; it passed by a 29-2 vote.  According to everyone not named or employed by Ron Richard, it enjoyed broad support in the House. GOP Sen. Scott Rupp:

Rupp said informal polling revealed the bill had 110 votes in the House, more than enough for passage. He said he thought Speaker of the House Ron Richard and other House leaders blocked the bill.

"We had overwhelming support from rank-and-file members, but key House leadership did not want it to come to fruition," Rupp said.

And indeed, it was Richard's great concern with the interests of the "insurance community and what have you" that prevented the vote. GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt:

[Schmitt] explained that in 2009, the autism bill was voted out of the Senate by a 29-2 vote. However, it was bottled up in a House committee and never made it onto the floor for a vote.

According to Schmitt, insurance lobbyists can take credit for stopping progress on the bill in 2009.

Yet in Richard's mind -- at least when he's talking to friendly hometown reporters -- this is hogwash. 

After months of being "somewhat criticized throughout the state," Richard spokesperson Kristen Blanchard said the whip counts of their GOP colleagues in the Senate were wrong because House Republicans were lying to their constituents and colleagues about their support for the bill.  Seriously. 

And now, in March 2010, Richard says he's just not uninterested in "ram[ming] something through." 

As usual, Ron Richard is right.