Why can’t Missouri fund itself?

Matt Pearl

No matter who occupies the spot as our nation’s chief executive, I tend always to find his State of the Union address to be somewhat meaningless.

The speech is always a political spin, a message cultivated to reflect the success of his policies, programs and prophecies. The rhetoric of the speech itself serves as a constant reminder that our chief executive is, above all else, the immaculately groomed spokesman for his party.

We elect our leaders to serve the people, not their own agendas. But name one candidate for either major party — think of every possible one who would even consider a run at the 2016 ticket — who does not hold a personal agenda.

Think how we would react to a candidate who said something like, “I have my own personal feelings on immigration reform, but we will move forward with a plan that Americans are ready to accept.”

We would call his answer a cop-out, and his or her radical doctrine of executing the people’s will as being weak.

So, blaming leaders is fun. I do it with regularity, in fact.

But we average folks need to keep one important truth in mind: Most of this country’s problems are yours and mine.

And whether we caused all or most of its troubles is irrelevant: they are all ours to address.

The truth is, many issues have no single, clear solution. I believe that most problems can be approached from numerous directions, and likely have multiple possible fixes.

Is that radical? They used to call that critical thinking.

My career as an educator allows me yearly — even monthly — to see the laughable conclusion of extreme viewpoints colliding in Jefferson City.

We’re back to that time again.

The governor proposes a state education budget that the state cannot afford.

The Republican majority in the Missouri House and Senate will say no, and the good guy/bad guy balance remains intact. The governor is a hero whether it passes or not. The Legislature in turn has the unenviable choice either to overspend its budget on education, or to rob schools of valuable funding.

They are all playing ping-pong, and you and I haven’t even been invited to the table.

So who really needs to be paddled?

But don’t forget another underlying issue: Why had education become such an afterthought that the Legislature can’t come up with enough money to fund it?

Who could have possibly predicted that revenue collections from statewide gambling would be difficult to project from year to year?

When our leaders gamble on the success of gambling to fund state education, it would appear that it is our schools that lose the bet. Maybe the Republicans wouldn’t have to take the fall for saying no to education all the time if they would use their state majority in both the House and Senate to fund education to the specifications the law puts forward.

I know, I know. I’m oversimplifying it. But do any of the rest of you ever get tired of people telling you a task is impossible — even though it’s a task you have seen others perform?

I would forego hearing a federal State of the Union address in favor of reading about the union of our state, where legislators had decided Missouri education, good roads and solid infrastructure were non-partisan endeavors.

Now that would really be something.