If you're feeling a little light in the wallet, it may be because your state budget was just approved spending about $16-billion. The Missouri House of Representatives passed the state's budget after nearly 2 1/2 days of debate.

To prepare I looked through budget documents which measure 3 feet, 6 1/2 inches when stacked up.

That's right, our state's budget is about as tall as your kitchen sink - and even then, our budget is not a line item budget and it lacks detailed accountability.

The budget now goes to the Senate where changes will be made. The changed budget will go to conference committee, probably in early May, where teams of legislators will hammer out compromises.

The final compromise is reviewed and approved by both the House and the Senate. Our Constitution says that must be done by May 8, 1998.

In late Fall and Winter, the department heads in every state department compile their budget requests for the coming year.

These go to the Governor who makes changes. On Jan. 21 of this year, the Governor released his budget and legislators got their first "real look" at it.

The Legislature's Budget Committee uses program information provided by bureaucrats and revenue projections from the Governor's Division of Budget to work on the budget.

On the Floor last week, the Budget Chair did not have updated revenue projections, so we were working with older numbers.

In addition, he couldn't tell lawmakers the projected amount of lapsed, or unused funds, nor how much money is planned for the state's Rainy Day Fund (NONE, for your information).

All this despite the fact that the budget is growing this year by about another $1- billion!

Legislators suggesting changes to the budget on the Floor were constantly told that the Budget Chairman wished to hold to the Governor's budget.

While our state is Constitutionally required to have a balanced budget, I agreed with the people who said we have a duty to review this budget, change it, and represent the views of the taxpayers who sent us to the House!

I supported a move to send the budget back to committee for further work and research, but the move failed.

In the end, the budget contained money for building a new Springfield museum, a St. Charles convention center, and the Kansas City World War I Liberty Veterans Memorial.

We give $3.6-million to Amtrak rail service (about $1-million less than they asked for). Out-of-state travel funds for the Transportation Department will be curtailed until they provide us with some type of reporting on their road projects so we can infuse accountability into that arena.

Five-million-dollars was removed from Soil Conservation funding. This was done due to an ongoing dispute in the use of Soil Conservation dollars. A series of cuts were offered on items including agricultural subsidies and the Social Services General Relief Fund.

That last proposed cut was a result of an audit finding. These cuts all failed much along party line votes. No money will go to Planned Parenthood since these tax dollars would subsidize abortions.

We will spend over $11-million one time to get equipment for family planning into county clinics so they can do cancer screenings, and the like, but NOT provide taxpayer funded abortions.

This expenditure should resolve the long-running dispute over tax money to Planned Parenthood while ensuring no lack of services for anyone as a result.

I support House Bill 1603, which was voted out of committee last this week.

It would require every Department, Division, and agency of government to do a detail based budget at least every five years specifically justifying every program.

Rep. David Schwab represents the 157th district