PLENTY OF TIME TO DEAL WITH MISSOURI'S APPROPRIATIONS

The chaos mentioned above has nowhere been more in evidence than in the failure of the General Assembly to deliver the first among its constitutional duties: Timely passage of a state budget. All but two of the 13 bills appropriating Missouri's $15 billion state budget have passed. Still undetermined is House Bill 10, which funds the departments of Health and Mental Health. (House Bill 12, which contains lawmakers' salaries and those of their staff, can't be taken up, according to the Constitution, until all other bills are dealt with.) The Constitution mandates passage of all these bills by 6 p.m. last Friday.

When lawmakers failed to meet this rather arbitrary deadline, anxious talk of a "constitutional crises" broke out in some fevered quarters. This is mostly overblown. The state's fiscal year starts July 1, so time exists to sort things out. As a point of historical reference, the deadline never existed in the Constitution until 1988, when voters adopted it. It can be argued that such an arbitrary date and time doesn't belong in the Constitution, but there it is.

It is worth noting that the governor is, once again, the primary cause of this dispute. No governor prior to him insisted on funding Planned Parenthood. It is Carnahan's insistence on sending state tax dollars to this special-interest group that has set us on this collision course with pro-life lawmakers who are unalterably opposed.