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Politically Speaking: 'Right To Work,' Rep. Barnes And Medicaid

Marshall Griffin, St. Louis Public Radio and the Beacon.

On this week’s podcast, Jason and Jo discuss the roadblocks to getting “right to work” on the ballot and why upcoming campaign finance reports matter. For the rest of the show, the Politically Speaking crew talks with Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City.

During the show, Barnes described his proposal to expand Medicaid – which some see as an alternative to the straight-up Medicaid expansion that Gov. Jay Nixon supports. Barnes also discussed his efforts to find out more about Missouri’s unsuccessful bid to lure Boeing’s 777X to Missouri.

On the show, Barnes said:

  • He learned a lot from former Senate President Pro Tem Mike Gibbons, a Kirkwood Republican. Barnes says Gibbons didn’t always take his advice when Barnes was an advisor – which provided him insight when he became a legislator.
  • Simply expanding Medicaid to 138 percent of the federal poverty level has no chance of passing.
  • Some Republican governors have proposed changes to Medicaid eligibility – as long as they're paired with changes to Medicaid's operation.
  • He requested documents to learn more about Missouri’s bid for the 777X. Barnes was one of a handful of legislators who voted against expanding the state’s incentives to land the civilian aircraft.

Follow Chris McDaniel on Twitter@csmcdaniel

Follow Jo Mannies on Twitter@jmannies

Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter@jrosenbaum

Follow Jay Barnes on Twitter@JayBarnes5

Jason is the politics correspondent for St. Louis Public Radio.
Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.

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