© 2023 St. Louis Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Politically Speaking: House Majority Leader Diehl On Tax Cut Fight And Session's End

Jason Rosenbaum/St. Louis Public Radio

The Politically Speaking crew this week returns to a “split show” format. On the first part of the show, St. Louis Public Radio reporters Chris McDaniel, Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies discuss the expectations for the General Assembly’s home stretch.

  Note: You can subscribe to us on iTunes now.

The trio also talked about whether the “private option” in a wide-ranging student transfer bill will hurt or help its chances of being implemented. And they delved into the politics and policy behind animal control in St. Louis County.

House Majority Leader John Diehl returned for the second part of the show. The Town and Country Republican controls the House calendar, and therefore will have a major say in what occurs in the final week of session.

During the show, Diehl said:

  •  He rejects Gov. Jay Nixon’s argument that a recently-passed tax cut contains a “fatal flaw” that would wipe out most of the income tax. Like other Republicans, he noted that former Supreme Court Judge William Ray Price discounted that possibility.
  • He expects to be able to have at least one Democratic vote in the case of a tax cut override. He also said he’s confident that the lone Democrat who voted for the bill – Rep. Jeff Roorda, D-Barnhart – won’t get bullied by the governor to change his vote.
  • If the tax cut override isn’t successful, Republicans have several irons in the fire. That includes the possibility of putting a tax cut on the August ballot.
  • It won't be easy for a sales tax increase for transportation projects to pass if it makes it to the ballot this fall.

Follow Chris McDaniel on Twitter@csmcdaniel

Follow Jo Mannies on Twitter@jmannies

Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter@jrosenbaum

Follow John Diehl on Twitter: @johndiehljr

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.