By Laura Scott, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

When children’s advocates approached Rep. Ryan Silvey early in Missouri’s legislative session, they had found the right lawmaker to make a difference for kids. Silvey, a Kansas City Republican, was part of the majority party that controls the legislative process. And, he was willing to help.

Advocates asked him to sponsor legislation that would help potentially hundreds of uninsured children to get medical attention.
Under their proposal, uninsured low-income children could be seen by a doctor at any of more than 400 clinics.

They would be presumed to be eligible for the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program, and then would be enrolled in it, if they were found to be qualified. But the children wouldn’t have to show a health-insurance card before they could be treated.

Silvey worked hard and convinced his fellow Republicans who control the legislature that this bill should pass. He successfully found funding in the state’s massive health budget to cover the costs of the additional children who would be helped.

It was a big victory for kids who need health care.

“But for his (Silvey’s) hard work, we would not have had (the legislation),” said House Speaker Pro Tem Bryan Pratt, a Blue Springs Republican, at a recent event sponsored by the Partnership for Children on the outcomes for kids of this year’s legislative session in Jefferson City. Even Democrat legislators in attendance agreed.

Aside from Silvey’s success, however, it wasn’t a particularly special year for children and youth.

An attitude as hard as steel exists in Jefferson City when it comes to the needs of the poor, who often are children.

So the gains this year were minimal: Working parents will be able to accept a small pay raise and not lose their state-assisted child care. Foster parents will get a little more money, and so will adoptive parents, particularly those who adopt special-needs children. More children can be enrolled in Early Head Start.

Lost was a proposal to substantially increase the state’s child-care assistance program, to allow many more low-income parents to work while getting help with child-care expenses.
At the Partnership for Children event last week, lawmakers encouraged the people who lobby for kids to keep trying.

But let’s face it, getting support for programs that cost money — even for children — is tough in Jefferson City. Legislators by and large are more interested in protecting embryos in the womb than they are in helping out children who are poor, hungry and underprivileged.

Kids lose out regularly to tax cuts for special interests. Lobbyists for children and low-income groups are out-financed by the big guns of the lobbies for corporate interests.

“They vote with those who sent them,” said one longtime children’s advocate about the financial interests that influence legislators.

Indeed, lawmakers know which side their bread is buttered on. They listen to those who give them money and who pay for their social events in Jefferson City.

But it’s not just the money. It’s an attitude about the poor. It is seen in the mean-spirited 2005 decision to deprive thousands of low-income Missourians of state-sponsored health insurance.

Pratt and others often talk about the need for those with an idea for spending money to find a way to pay for it. State what program should be cut to pay for a proposed program, they say.

Instead of that approach, why not eliminate the tax break given last year to the wealthiest Social Security recipients? Or end some other tax breaks for wealthy contributors and lobbying groups? That would raise some money.

Another solution? Elect people who believe children are the future of the state, and a priority for funding. It’s certainly important to have them in the GOP majority because there are too few now who think like Ryan Silvey.

Otherwise, children will continue to get shortchanged in Jefferson City. And we will all pay the price in the loss of human potential for a long time to come.

To reach Laura Scott, assistant editorial page editor, call 816-234-4452 or send e-mail to