By Marshall Griffin, KWMU
St. Louis, MO – The Missouri Senate has a new budget chairman. Republican Gary Nodler of Joplin takes over from former Senator Chuck Gross, who left to become Director of Administration for St. Charles County.
Nodler is a fiscal conservative who says he believes in maintaining a balanced budget. He says the one thing he won't do as chairman is engage in deficit spending:
"Back when I first started out in politics, the Democratic Party, for a number of decades, actually had deficit spending as a part of their platform," Nodler said.
Joan Bray of St. Louis, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, wants Nodler and other G.O.P. leaders to increase spending on Missouri's neediest citizens.
"55,000 children were cut from Medicaid, I think we should focus on restoring some of those, you know, all of those people who lost their health care," Bray said.
Bray says, though, that she thinks Nodler will do a good job of promoting bipartisanship among the two parties.