Republicans bringing new language to state Legislature

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Gone from the names of Missouri Senate committees are words such as "labor" and "welfare." They have been replaced by phrases such as "small business" and "government accountability."

The Legislature's new era of Republican leadership began taking semantic shape on Thursday.

With neither debates nor objections, the Senate changed its rules to abolish some committees, create new ones and reconfigure others. The House plans to take up a similar proposal next week.

The changes aren't just superficial labels in the first fully Republican-controlled Legislature since the days when Harry Truman was president.

"Those are small sort of cosmetic changes that signify new focus," said Senate President Pro Tem Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau.

Democrats, long accustomed to setting the legislative agenda, began sharing Statehouse power after they lost control of the Missouri Senate in January 2001. The House switched from Democratic to Republican control Wednesday with the start of the 2003 session.

Kinder and new House Speaker Catherine Hanaway touched similar themes in their session-opening speeches Wednesday -- being more friendly to business, reducing the size of government and making agencies accountable.

The changing of committee names showed that some traditional Democratic issues had been replaced by Republican ones.

"It wasn't a hidden message -- it was blatant," said Democratic Sen. Patrick Dougherty of St. Louis, who also has served in the House.

The Senate trimmed the number of committees to 17 from 21. Dumped was the Public Health and Welfare Committee; its duties were rolled into what now is called the Committee on Aging, Families, Mental and Public Health.

Welfare was an outdated term that evolved out of the Depression and was effectively reformed by the Republican-led U.S. Congress in the 1990s, Kinder said. So there was no need for such terminology in the Missouri Senate, he said.

Dougherty warned about the possible consequences of combining two big topics -- health care and senior issues -- under one committee. Because committees can send only a limited number of bills to the Senate floor for debate, it could be more difficult to advance proposals on subjects such as nursing home and foster care reforms, he said.

"Those things make a difference in people's lives," Dougherty said. "I don't understand the logic of that (change)."

In the House, Republicans are proposing to trim the number of committees to 31 from 42. Eliminated are committees whose names include such terms as "consumer protection," the "environment," "labor" and "utilities regulation."

As in the Senate, many of the areas covered by the old Democratic committees would fall under the umbrella of new Republican committees. Bills that might have gone to the old House Labor Committee, for example, would now go to the new Workforce Development and Workplace Safety Committee, Hanaway said.

"Some of them are name changes meant to tell people what committees actually do, some of them are reflective of maybe a change in priorities, some of them are also a reflection of the changing times," Hanaway said.

Before the House committee changes can be voted upon, they first must go before the House Committee on Rules, Joint Rules, Bills Perfected and Printed. If the changes are approved, even that committee would be transformed. Under Republican leadership, it would simply be the Rules Committee.

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