JEFFERSON CITY - Missouri Attorney General Jay "Old Way" Nixon has reached way back into the past to offer a tired and job-killing idea: more taxes. With no plan of their own, Missouri Democrats are calling for higher tax on Missouri?s working families as their only idea for changing the funding of education in Missouri.

Nixon said Friday that he never before had seen a bill of this magnitude pass without a funding source. “The way they have passed it,” Nixon said, “they are funding it by cutting Medicaid for poor people. There’ll be seven more years of cuts.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 6, 2005)

"So, Nixon?s only idea is to make the people pay more in taxes. How old is that one? Nixon and the other tax-and-spend types who control their party never learn, but they never forget," said John Hancock, spokesman for the Missouri Republican Party. "He and his fellow Democrats just can?t deal with Governor Blunt?s leadership and commitment to increase the funding of our public schools every year he is in office without raising the taxes on the hard-working people of Missouri."

As Governor Blunt and the General Assembly reach agreements on public school funding this week, Missouri Democrats can only watch in amazement. While it may be inconceivable to Nixon and his party that public schools can be adequately funded without more massive tax hikes, the people of Missouri are seeing the promises of the 2004 governor?s election come to pass: our schools are seeing major gains in funding without a dollar in new taxes.

"We have made a commitment to the people of Missouri," Hancock said. "Governor Blunt is honoring that commitment and will continue to do so even while standing firm against the tired, old taxing proposals of the opposition. Perhaps when the new formula is shown to be a success, the old tax-and-spend philosophy of tax raisers like Nixon will go the way of the dinosaur ? at last."