May - 22 - 2026
🏛️ Issue of the Week: Bad Assumptions Create Bad Outcomes
Summary
Imagine your family suddenly facing a major healthcare crisis. Imagine adapting your entire life and budget just to keep things afloat.
And imagine doing it in Missouri.
You would carefully divide every dollar between housing, healthcare, transportation, and your children’s needs, because long-term survival would depend on smart planning and responsible spending.
Of course, it would be better to have enough left over to actually build a future instead of just paying bills.
Now imagine building your budget around the hope that you might win the lottery. Then, when the lottery money never arrives, suddenly you can’t afford healthcare, housing, or transportation. It would make it hard to go to work, and you would most likely end up in an unstoppable downward spiral.
That’s bad planning, not at all setting up a good future.
This is exactly the bad assumption of the Missouri Legislature when they passed the budget on May 6. My opponent, a member of the Supermajority, should have actively worked to stop it. She did not. Here is what you should know:
Our State Budget is Based on Bad Assumptions:
On May 6, the legislature passed the budget for the coming year. Its assumptions were a fantasy at best, devastating for the state at worst:
• Bad Assumption Number 1: The state will receive more revenue from lottery tickets than it has in the past. This assumption is most likely wrong for next year but was already proven wrong for this year- school funding is short $60 million.
• Bad Assumption Number 2: Cutting funding for desperately needed programs from public education to Medicaid funding and support for technology, that makes government systems more efficient - will not cause major issues like higher crime, weaker economies, and more citizen frustration.
• Bad Assumption Number 3: It’s “ok” to use $2.3 Billion from the general revenue to cover deficit spending in their minds. Even though this assumption weakens us now and could very well push us off a fiscal cliff in the future from which it will be more than a few decades to recover.
Key District 33
Whether you live in the smaller towns of Greenwood or Lone Jack, or the larger suburbs of Blue Springs or Lee’s Summit, everyone needs clean water, public safety, emergency services, and strong public education. Those are not luxuries — they are foundational investments in a healthy community.
Everyone wants and needs great public education; it represents our children’s shared future. Areas with strong public schools also have higher property values and less crime.
My opponent is part of the Supermajority in Jefferson City, and they have almost unlimited power. She was either unwilling or unable to form a coalition in her own party to create strong financial assumptions about funding the Missouri Budget and safeguard not only educational funding, but all critical budget items that keep our economy stable.
She’s bad for reflecting the will of the voters, bad at planning, bad at assumptions, bad for education, and bad for the economy. And when she knows her party is wrong, she is not strong enough to form a coalition within her supermajority to fight for our district.
A Better Path Forward & Conclusion
When I get to Jefferson City, the first thing I will do is meet as many lawmakers as I can and find common ground on my constituents’ critical issues- with the budget, economic issues and education at the top of the list. If I am not lucky enough to be in the party with a Supermajority, or even a majority, and the other party is not willing to work together for the good of the voters of Missouri, particularly the 33rd District, I will not sit by quietly and let it happen. In business and at home, I’ve had to keep a regular budget based on realistic assumptions. Our state government should have to do nothing less. We deserve government that works again- I’m going to work to make sure it does.