Lawmakers react to veto session

The fallout from Wednesday’s veto session in the Missouri legislature began early Thursday morning after a very late night inside the capitol. Lawmakers went through each of Gov. Jay Nixon’s 29 vetoed bills. They were able to override him on 10. But that didn’t include the two biggest bills, the income tax cut bill and the gun bill.

All of the lawmakers ABC 17 News talked with Thursday were Democrats. Party leaders said the session was a major victory for the party. Minority party leaders tell me if the house or senate wants to pass major bills, then both parties need to be included.

House Democrats said none of the 10 overturned bills were substantial. They say of the two biggest bills of the session, one went down in flames and cooler heads prevailed in the Senate on the other one. But the one Democrats said made them nervous the most was the income tax cut bill.

“We knew that all the members of our caucus were going to be with us, it was that important of an issue, and we thought we had a few republicans on the other side we didn’t realize how many we had,” House Minority Leader Rep. Jacob Hummel, D, St. Louis said.

Hummel said he was surprised to see they had 15 republicans. It was more than enough not overturn the bill. House Speaker Tim Jones, R, Eureka released this statement:
“This is only a temporary setback for the majority of house members who believe substantive tax relief is the best way to grow our economy and to help the hard-working Missourians…”

After HB253 was lost, focus then turned over to the gun bill that would have nullified federal gun laws. House Democrats said during the debate on the floor, they thought they were going to be the ones on top again. But as the debate went along, the momentum shifted against them.

Democratic leaders said they felt better because rumors were going around that the top two leaders in the senate were against the bill. That ended up being right.

Senate President Pro-Tem Tom Dempsey, R, released a statement about the gun bill that was one vote short of an override:
“…the bill could allow frivolous lawsuits against our hardworking police officers and sheriff’s deputies for acting in good faith performance of their officials duties.”

“Clearly the Senate is the mature chamber, they are much more deliberative in their discussions and Missouri was the laughing stock of the nation,” Hummel said.

Democrats say House leadership pushed as many bills through the house as it could and there were several errors in many of them.