“This Week” with Rep. Caleb Rowden

As our lawmakers converge at the Capitol for the 2016 session, we’re hearing more details about legislative priorities and goals.

As our guest for “This Week” I start our conversation with Representative Caleb Rowden of Columbia, what he thought of Governor Nixon’s last State of the State Address and final plans as governor.

Watch the video, or read this transcript of our conversation:

CALEB ROWDEN: You know, I thought a lot of his priorities are good priorities. He didn’t mention too much about transportation which is something I would have loved to heard. Education was good. I think the problem is he’s spending monopoly money. I mean he has 800 million dollars of spending in Medicaid in one bucket. It’s the single biggest line item general revenue jump in Missouri. So, we’ve said all along for K-12 folks, for higher education folks who want to see sustainable budget increases over the upcoming years we’ve got to control Medicaid. So, 450 (million) of general revenue, 800 million otherwise its unsustainable, and it’s going to hurt every other piece of the budget this year.

JOEY PARKER: What about the Democrats arguing that Medicaid expansion is the way to fix that?

CALEB ROWDEN: Well, Medicaid expansion doesn’t fix that because you have two different populations, so the Medicaid expansion population is about 300,000 individuals whereas the current population of the growth is about 900,000 and Medicaid expansion does nothing to change the structure of the system which is why we have gotten where we are. So yeah, you can expand Medicaid and potentially get more money from the federal government on that 300,000 population but you still got this, literally, now almost billion dollar a year growth in the expansion population that nobody has brought a solution to the table on.

JOEY PARKER: The Governor said that, at last he checked “they weren’t giving away concrete and asphalt” he noted that in the speech. Voters rejected the 2014 sales tax to pay for roads. (Missouri hasn’t) had a fuel tax increase since the 80’s right? What are your plans?

CALEB ROWDEN: Yeah, I think come to the table with a short term solution gas tax, Senator Libla has been pushing that and I think it has broad support although it is tough to get through the Senate because of the nature of the chamber over there, but we’ve got to come to the table with a long term substantive answer to the question and because of our rules and laws down there, anything that we do there has to go to other people so I think it is imperative to get something on the ballot again. And, whether it is a gas tax or toll road or some combination of things so that the voters of Missouri can have another say at.

JOEY PARKER: A voter ID bill has already been moved forward that would take that to the vote of the people once again. How do you feel about that?

CALEB ROWDEN: Well, we voted for it actually (Thursday) to send it to the vote of the people. And it’s something that our polling says about 70 percent support in the state of Missouri. A lot of people, Democrats and Republicans, can say it’s common sense just to make sure that every vote counts and it counts the way its suppose to.

JOEY PARKER: Some critics refer to it almost as Jim Crow-type laws.

CALEB ROWDEN: Yeah, well I mean that’s rhetoric and doesn’t have a place in our discussion.

JOEY PARKER: One of the things you’re pushing is ethics reform. You seem to have pretty much everybody’s support, bipartisan support on this. Last week though, your colleague on the Democratic side, Stephen Webber, said it’s just not enough and that it should apply to your current class of lawmakers.

CALEB ROWDEN: Yeah well, it will apply to 92 percent of the current General Assembly and will apply to every member of the General Assembly from here on out. And so it was the right thing to do. It’s the way that you get legislation done. I think some people go down to Jefferson City just to stop progress and to stop things from happening. Some people go down there to functionally work together and compromise and get things done and that’s what we’ve done here. And that’s why even though my friend speaks against that he voted for it and will continue voting for it because it’s good politics and its good policy.

JOEY PARKER: And when you say “it” lets just be clear we are talking lobbyist gifts.

CALEB ROWDEN: Yeah, yeah and the revolving door, yeah.

JOEY PARKER: It’s not addressing campaign contributions?

CALEB ROWDEN: We haven’t gone down the campaign contribution road yet and our goal was find the things that have broad support that we can push quickly get through the House, get through the Senate, get to the Governor’s desk as quickly as possible. Campaign contributions are a little stickier subject, and so we stayed away from that in the first batch of bills.

JOEY PARKER: What’s your next major hurdle?

CALEB ROWDEN: You gotta get through the Senate. The Senate likes to change stuff and so we have been having good conversations with Senate leadership and Senate ranking file folks just to make sure, one, that they are on board and if they are going to make changes what’s that going to look like. You know, if that comes back to the house are we going to have a bill that looks similar to the way that it did when we sent it over? And I am confident that they’re ready to go and they’re going to push it pretty quick.

JOEY PARKER: Representative Rowden, thank you again for joining us.

CALEB ROWDEN: Thank you, appreciate it.