Lembke Involved in Stimulus Filibuster

A South St. Louis County senator was part of a four-man filibuster last week over legislation reauthorizing the spending of federal stimulus dollars.

Sen. Jim Lembke—a Lemay Republican whose legislative district includes Oakville – joined three other lawmakers this week in holding up House Bill 18. The legislation reauthorizes a number of projects that were paid for with federal stimulus dollars, including money for weatherization and energy efficiency, health care information technology, broadband infrastructure and highway and bridge infrastructure investment projects.

Lembke and the three other lawmakers—Sens. Brian Nieves, R-Washington, Rob Schaaf, R-St. Joseph, and Will Kraus, R-Lee’s Summit—temporarily blocked legislation earlier this session to extend federal unemployment benefits. They agreed to end their filibuster in exchange partly for taking $250 million out of House Bill 18.

But that ran into a stumbling block when key lawmakers in the budget process – such as Senate Appropriations Chairman Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia— said they were not part of the aforementioned deal. By the time the bill got to the floor, Lembke and other lawmakers were targeting about $41 million worth of projects that had not been committed or weren’t under contract.

When that effort failed, Lembke and the three lawmakers held up the bill for 14 hours. They agreed to stand down after roughly $14 million was taken out of the bill – mostly from the weatherization and energy efficiency program.

In an interview, Lembke said  the filibuster yielded some successes—such as getting to speak on the Missouri Senate floor at length about “government out of control” and a “government that is broke.”

“One thing you figure out through this process is that many of our colleagues in the Senate and on the other side of the building have found out that with any of these monies that come to the states, you’re going to be able to find somebody who can use it back in your district,” Lembke said. “If it creates one job, if it keeps one municipality or political subdivision in the black, then we can’t sent it back or we have to take it.”

“I think we’ve come to a point where we’re just addicted to the money,” Lembke added.

Indeed, not everybody agreed with the four senators’ course of action. For instance, Schaefer said on the Senate floor that he didn’t feel the filibuster would prompt significant changes in federal government spending.

“I think that we’re trying to solve problems as [state senators] that we cannot control that are coming out of Washington, D.C.,” Schaefer said. “Sending this money back or taking away the appropriation authority is going to do zero to what your children, your grandchildren, my children, my grandchildren pick up.”

Asked about whether the filibuster would actually bring about changes to federal spending policies, Lembke said “it’s not really my responsibility as far as what the federal government would do with money the state of Missouri would send back to it.”

“I can’t control that,” Lembke said. “But I can stand... on behalf of taxpayers in Missouri and behalf of the next generation who we’re putting further and further into debt," Lembke said. "So I think that our goal all along was to make a point… to shame the federal government into doing the right thing, living within its means.”

He added the lawmakers want to get the message out to Missourians and Americans "to wake up and say ‘we do have a serious, a real problem here.’”

“If we can continue to ring that bell, I think it will wake people up,” he said.

Lembke said as the process evolved, the four lawmakers found out more about projects that were not committed. He said he would have been “happier” if the lawmakers were able to take out all of the money not under contract.

But he did say that while it’s difficult to predict the future, the senators involved in holding up the bill could stand up again.

“If we think there needs to be a compromise to the conservative position on the bill, then I can envision us working together again,” Lembke said. “The interesting thing about the Senate is because of the different issues that come before us, there are different dynamics that brings different members together.”

“I am a huge fan of the filibuster,” Lembke added. “I think it was a tool that was given to the Senate by very wise founders… to slow government from doing very bad things to the people.”