Holden's Hallmark sums it up

By Dan Wehmer

A day after Missouri Gov. Bob Holden told the Missouri General Assembly that he wasn't willing to "trade teachers and doctors for cigarettes and gambling chips," he and his wife, First Lady Lori Hauser Holden, sent wife Shay and I a card.

Well ... let me clarify.

The card was addressed "to the parents of William E. Wehmer," a definition we qualify as fitting, since William is our son, born on Jan. 3 of this year.

It wasn't your basic card -- you know, basic white stock with simple black lettering. Instead, it was a trifold Hallmark card printed in full color and complete with a yellow Hallmark envelope, combined items that carry a retail price tag of at least $3.

Inside, the card carried the typical Hallmark gibberish, a six-stanza poem commemorating the birth of a child. At its bottom, and I suppose the point of the card, Bob and Lori Holden urged us to make sure our child received his immunization shots, starting at the age of two months.

Get the irony? William, as of last week, is 5 months old.

Thus, Bob's message is three months' behind.

Not that I needed it.

Moreover, our state government, namely his office, sure as heck, in a budget year when dollars are as scarce as dodo birds, didn't need to waste the expense of sending me or any other Missouri parents such a needless card on the taxpayers' dole.

As he said in his aforementioned statement to the legislature, Bob won't choose cigarettes and poker chips over doctors and teachers. But he will choose sending a Hallmark card, sent three months' late, over basic fiscal responsibility. In a state starved for revenue, he is quite willing to fire my family a meaningless card stamped "State Of Missouri: Official Business," mailed at the state rate of 20.3 cents, which is 16.7 cents less than what you and I pay to mail a first-class letter.

The card, to me, sums up Bob Holden. His message is simple.

He loves to spend.

To pay for it, he wants to tax.

Never mind the fact Missourians have rejected the past three tax increases placed before them on the Missouri ballot. Forget the fact that Bob won't approve a $3 co-pay for non-working Medicaid deadbeats to help raise state revenues; his answer is to raise income taxes.

The list goes on and on.

This week, if the Missouri Senate can't hack up a state budget amended last week by the Missouri House and get it approved by Hol-den, many facets of our state government will shut down once July 1 arrives.

In essence, the man is holding all of us hostage. He's already forced a special legislative session, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars each week. Next up is to force the legislature into a budget referendum (meaning that he wants a tax increase placed on the statewide ballot), a process that again will cost thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

All so we can vote no. In lieu of placing a tax issue on the ballot, members of the Missouri House and Senate have opted to take federal relief dollars and add them to the budget, essentially providing cash for Holden's sacred political cows.

"To claim that this federal money will solve our budget problems is like finding a $10 bill and thinking you'll never have to pay for lunch again," Holden said Thursday to the assembly.

We disagree.

Because if Bob found a $10 bill, he'd only have $7 left from the start.

The first $3 would be spent on a needless Hallmark card.

Besides, as big a spender as he appears to be, neither $7 nor $10 would cover the cost of his lunch.

Especially if prepared by his personal chef.

And, yes, he has one.

Dan Wehmer of Seymour, Mo., is the editor and publisher of the Webster County Citizen.