Missouri lawmakers are advancing a proposal that would fundamentally change how Missourians pay taxes. The plan would eliminate the state income tax and replace it with higher sales taxes and new taxes on services, giving the wealthiest Missourians a tax cut while raising taxes for most everyone else. In January, our partners at the Missouri...Read More

Haircuts. Car repairs. Bus fares. Netflix and audiobooks. These could all get more expensive if plans to impose new taxes on services and phase out the income tax go into effect.  And who would take the biggest hit? Working class Missourians, who already pay a higher share of their incomes in state and local taxes...Read More

Tonight, I’m catching a flight to Washington, D.C. to meet with staffers of Missouri’s congressional delegation and express Missourians’ opposition to the $300 billion in proposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in Congress’s “one big, beautiful bill.” Empower Missouri’s focus has traditionally been on state-level policy, but the proposed cuts to Medicaid...Read More

This week, committees in the U.S. House of Representatives released major reconciliation proposals with cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs. As the title suggests, these proposals will have big impacts for Missouri families, our healthcare, our nutrition, and our state budget. The federal government controls the budgets for most major anti-poverty programs. Unfortunately, many...Read More

To my ear, “sequester” is a lovely word. Despite what the dictionary says about its synonyms like segregate, seclude and withdraw or its chemical meaning related to binding and absorbing carbon dioxide, it has a certain lyrical quality. I almost expect it to be a dessert wine (“I’ll take a glass of the Sequester, please”)...Read More

On March 28, the Missouri House approved its version of the $29.23 billion state operating budget for the 2020 fiscal year. The budget process now continues on the Senate side of the building, with final agreement due by May 10, a week before adjournment of the 2019 Regular Session of the General Assembly. There is...Read More