KINDER'S COMMENTARY; A DEBATE ON THE REALITIES OF MISSOURI'S SPENDING? ALLOW ME

House speaker pro tem Jim Kreider, a Democrat from Nixa, recently took this newspaper to task for editorial comments on the growth of state spending that he deemed excessively partisan. Jimmy Kreider is as likable as they come, but I always reserve the right to disagree with my friends.

First, at no point in his letter to the editor does Kreider allege that this newspaper misstated a fact. This is noteworthy, because the tone of his epistle is so outraged, from the very first line, that the reader expected to encounter a denunciation of where we got our facts wrong. Kreider makes no such allegation.

Second, a careful reading of the Kreidergram reveals that, in making a credible case for the governance his party has given Missouri these last seven years, Kreider is short on facts of his own. Allow me.

With growth of the state budget averaging close to 7 percent per year in the Carnahan era, state government is growing at about three times the rate of inflation. Nice work if you're the party of government, the party of government employees, the party that pushes to unionize all state government and our public schools too. The Carnahan Democrats are hell-bent on spending the tobacco billions rather than return the money to the taxpayers as I would do. So it is fair to conclude that this 7 percent growth rate isn't fast enough for them.

Ten years or so ago, the Department of Social Services had approximately 7,000 employees. We began reforming welfare in 1994, and this effort really took off when the Republican Congress passed its welfare reform bill and President Clinton -- after two previous vetoes -- signed it in the election year of 1996. Welfare rolls began dropping precipitously thereafter in what many have called the most successful social legislation in recent American history. But here's Mel Carnahan's proud boast: In the year the Dow blew right through the 10,000 mark, and notwithstanding the shrinking welfare rolls, you might say we did the something similar at Social Services -- exceeded 10,000 employees, that is. Fiscal 2000 Social Services spending will exceed that of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for the first time.

Or take Medicaid. Please. Even before the Democrats launched a huge expansion of this program last year, 43 percent of births in Missouri were paid for by Medicaid. More than four out of 10. (Medicaid providers constantly tell me that before we expand the program, the state ought to start paying them a better share of their actual costs, but that's another column.) Anyway, the Democrats didn't think 43 percent was high enough, so last year they expanded it. Families of four making just under $50,000 now qualify for Medicaid. One fiscal note on a bill passed this year projected that within three years, an astonishing 52 percent of newborns will be on Medicaid.

Wonder how long Jimmy Kreider thinks we can go on that way?

Or how about highways and transportation? The year 1992 saw bipartisan passage of a phased-in fuel-tax increase to pay for a 15-year plan. Last year the Carnahan-appointed highway and transportation commission scrapped that plan. They didn't stretch to a 19-year, or 23-year, or 25-year plan, but rather gutted it entirely, with the money shifted to urban projects. As soon as this was done, the Carnahan/road contractor crowd starting pushing another tax. So the Carnahan legacy here is that they took our money, pushed for yet another tax hike for transportation and still we aren't getting the roads we were promised.

Food for thought on a hot summer day.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.