All of Gov. Mike Parson’s vetoes this year are intact.
The Missouri legislature met Wednesday for their annual veto session, with the House voting to override 11 of the governor’s line-item vetoes made to this year’s state budget. But the Missouri Senate chose not to attempt any veto overrides, rendering the House’s actions moot.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Lincoln Hough, R-Springfield, says it’s a question of math.
“As I went back and I looked at the vote counts on all of these bills on the final motions, granted, you take them in totality, you take a House Bill 2, a House Bill 3 all the way through, you could maybe argue that the outcome could be different,” Hough says. “When I look at the necessary votes to override a governor being 23 in this chamber, I’m not sure that we get there.”
He says he does not like to come to the Senate Floor and do something when he does not know the outcome.
“I think the more important thing about the budget that we passed last year is there’s a whole lot of good in there and I think there’s a lot of things, there’s a lot of investments we made all around the state in everyone’s districts that we can be proud of. I don’t know, this kind of seems like an exercise in futility if you ask me,” Hough says.
House Speaker Dean Plocher says that the veto session is an important exercise in democracy, despite no vetoes being overridden (see video below for his full comments).
Governor Mike Parson vetoed more than 555-million dollars in the 53-billion-dollar state budget, including 15-million dollars to help crime victims, 6.8-million in rural health behavioral crisis center expansions, and five-million dollars for autism research.
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