RHETORIC VERSUS REALITY

In the hot winds of rhetoric that blow across Missouri every election year, just about everything is said and anything can be heard. But here in Missouri, you can't just tell 'em, you've got to show 'em. For the past two years, the Missouri General Assembly and governor have done just that by accomplishing careful, deliberate improvements that exemplify the difference between gridlocked statementcraft and cooperative statecraft.

During the past two years, the Missouri General Assembly has worked together with the Carnahan administration to accomplish substantial and dramatic improvements in funding education, reducing workers' compensation costs, eliminating welfare dependency, improving the availability of health care and protecting consumers. It is a two-year breakthrough of accomplishment that overshadows the meager status-quo perpetuated under the preceding 12 years of Republican-administration gridlock.

In January 1993, a new administration and General Assembly were mandated by court order to reshape a system of funding public education deemed fiscally insufficient and generally inequitable. A deadline imposed by the courts deprived lawmakers the luxury of Supreme Court review before they were required to act. To protect the continuing education of Missouri's young people while avoiding the costly mistakes of past administrations, the General Assembly with bipartisan support forged a new foundation formula that responded to the court's mandate within the time the court allowed. To equalize revenue distribution while ensuring no district lost funding, the smallest possible tax increase was imposed on those most able to afford it: wealthy citizens and corporations.

To protect against the court's action being used simply to secure additional revenue, the legislation required higher educational performance standards to be established -- results to be measured in areas that include reading, mathematics, science, social studies, and health. Even before these standards could be established through input from parents, teachers and interested citizens, detractors have mislabeled this as "outcome based" education.

This simply is not true. The critics raise the false issues of "voter approval" and "outcome based" education because they cannot attack the real accomplishments contained in the Outstanding Schools Act.

During this same session, the General Assembly enacted a health care program that qualifies our state for additional federal funding to provide essential health care to 50,000 low-income children and adults.

Lawmakers also brought representatives of labor and business together to seek accord on how to best overhaul the state's system of compensating injured workers. This plan, to be implemented over a three-year period, is a careful and measured approach to a complex matrix of issues effecting virtually every segment of our state's economy.

During the new law's first year, the vast majority of worker's compensation premiums have not increased at all, some declined and only a few have experienced slight increases that fall far below the exaggerated claims of detractors and the actual experience of the last three years.

During this year's legislative session, the Missouri General Assembly enacted the toughest anti-crime measure in the nation. It requires vicious, predatory criminals to serve virtually all their sentences and other repeated felons to face proportionately longer prison terms for each subsequent offense.

At the same time, non-violent offenders are required to undergo mandatory drug treatment, educational or vocational training to develop skills essential to making a living without breaking the law once they've paid their debt to society.

Lawmakers this year also adopted legislation that dramatically limits the campaign contributions that candidates for public office can accept, enacts voluntary limits on the amounts candidates can spend and prohibits lawmakers from accepting contributions during legislative sessions.

Even though this has been called Campaign Finance Reform legislation, those who contend we need no further reform in Missouri have been reluctant to attack this or the anti-crime legislation.

Perhaps they would rather this year's record of accomplishment rest quietly in the face of the previous 12 years of failure by Republican administrations to make even superficial accomplishments in these areas of critical public policy.

One area of this year's reform effort they do decry involves successful legislation intended to help impoverished Missourians break the cycle of welfare dependency so that they might become taxpayers instead of tax receivers.

This program, which specifically targets long-term welfare recipients, involves the development of self-sufficiency pacts that contain goals to help get these folks off welfare and into the workforce .

Every journey begins with a single step and this legislation is Missouri's first step toward eliminating welfare dependency as it exists today. But even before it is signed into law, the Republicans grouse that it isn't enough.

As the sponsor of this measure, I contend that helping 2,500 people gain the skills they need to get off the welfare rolls and into positions of society where they are self-sufficient taxpayers is a long-needed step that marks a dramatic turnaround in public policy that will benefit all Missouri taxpayers.

In just two years, the General Assembly and Carnahan administration have regained ground previously lost to gridlock by improving education, requiring criminals to serve their sentences, helping more Missourians get basic health care, getting the poor off welfare rolls and spurring economic growth that will benefit all Missourians .

Fortunately, as the hot air of political rhetoric blows across the election-year landscape, it ultimately will be the citizens of this great state that make the final decision regarding who should run their government and how.

James L. Mathewson, D-Sedalia, is President Pro Tem of the Missouri Senate.