By AP/KWMU
Jefferson City, Mo. – The Missouri House has passed a $21 billion budget that focuses on new spending, instead of cutting.
The budget for the fiscal year starting this July restores benefits like eyeglasses and wheel chair batteries for people who lost them last year. It also re-starts a smaller version of a Medicaid program for the working disabled.
But majority Republicans turned back Democratic attempts to restore services to tens of thousands of others who were cut from Medicaid last year.
The budget also includes funding for many smaller items left out last year -- like lunches for some Special Olympics athletes and aid to cotton farmers fighting the boll weevil.
The budget now goes to the Senate. It must be passed by early May.