14-04-2025
Missouri Republicans do nothing as Trump steals our funds and tanks the economy
U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt speaks to reporters after the Governor's Ham Breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia in August 2024 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt is confused about what his job is — or unwilling to do it.
Asked recently about the Trump Administration impounding $8.5 million of Title X funds granted to the Missouri Family Health Council to provide contraception, cancer screenings and STI testing at 52 clinics across the state, Schmitt sought to downplay the panic about Trump's broader impounding of funds.
Schmitt said he gets asked questions about what Trump might do to us, but says 'those things never happen. There's an effort to sort of gin up outrage all the time.'
On the withholding of Title X funds specifically, Schmitt said he would be 'happy to look at it more closely. I just think this idea that somehow everything's in jeopardy, it's just not true.'
'Now do Guatemalan sex changes need to go? Yeah, we don't need to fund that,' he continued. 'Do we need to fund DEI in Burma? No, we don't need to do that. Do we need to fund DEI Sesame Street in Iraq? We don't need to do that, that's part of the problem, though, right? All of this stuff is just going out the door, nobody's looked at it, it's been really irresponsible.'
That's a lot of dishonesty to unpack, but the bottom line is that everything is in fact in jeopardy and it's Schmitt's job to do something about it.
Forgive my stating the obvious, but we have three branches of government and Schmitt is a member of the legislative branch. It's his job to pass laws and allocate funding. The president doesn't get to ignore the laws that Congress has passed. Yet Schmitt is trying to absolve Trump and Elon Musk's illegal withholding of funding by playing dumb about the essential programs that Trump's theft is wrecking.
Congress enacted Title X over 50 years ago to fund necessary reproductive health care for low-income individuals. If Schmitt is genuinely unfamiliar with Title X, that is embarrassing for him and for Missouri. More likely, he is fully aware that increasing numbers of his constituents are scared or angry.
Schmitt is presumably repeating debunked claims about Sesame Street and 'Guatemalan sex changes' to distract from the fact that life saving programs are being gutted.
For example, funding for vaccine outreach is being withheld at a moment when we have a resurgence of measles, including in nearby states, that has killed children. The feds are withholding $255 million intended for public health programs in Missouri, and millions of our medical research dollars.
But setting aside the relative merits of any particular program — if Congress funded it, Trump doesn't get to just take it away.
Congressional Republicans, rather than demanding Trump execute the laws they have passed, have been lobbying Trump for relief for favored constituents, like farmers, from his impoundments and tariffs.
Begging the king for favors is not how things are supposed to work in our constitutional system.
It isn't legal for Trump to rip up the budget because this is a representative democracy. The budget is the product of negotiations and compromises made by legislators representing the interests of people across the U.S. — not just the president's favorite people.
A distaste for taking hard votes and saying hard things is a longstanding problem in Congress that has concentrated too much power in the executive branch. But this is an abdication of Congress's duties like we've never seen before.
Though our representatives have sometimes acknowledged the pain Trump is causing, they have done next to nothing to stop it. Trump's tariffs (which are likely illegal because he is using emergency powers when there is no emergency) could be stopped by Congress.
Instead, House Republicans, including all of Missouri's, voted to amend House rules so that they cannot take a vote on removing the tariffs. They know their constituents are in trouble, but they are unwilling to do their jobs representing them if it means risking the wrath of Trump.
In the Senate, four Republicans did vote to end the 'national emergency' supposedly justifying Trump's tariffs on Canada. Missouri's senators were not among them.
Trump's carnival of lawlessness has led to nearly 150 lawsuits seeking to remove tariffs or restore funding, but the courts will not be enough to save us.
If clinics across the state close, kids go hungry, and people die of preventable diseases, our cowardly legislators will be as much to blame as Trump.
