MoHELA proposal is now worthless

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt's "Lewis & Clark Initiative" started out with a laudable goal but a nefarious means of getting there.

After a thorough mangling in the General Assembly, the plan has gone from half-bad to all bad.

To raise funds for a major expansion of the state's life sciences industry, Blunt proposed plundering the assets of the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MoHELA), the nonprofit agency that helps families afford college.

Lawmakers are on the verge of grabbing those assets. Making things even worse, the life sciences building program has degraded into a hodge-podge of campus construction that excludes Kansas City and Columbia.

Legislative leaders already had purged medical research buildings from the list because of hysteria over stem-cell research.

So much for the state's commitment to life sciences.

This week Senate Republicans, in an act of petty retribution, yanked $15 million that had been intended for an expanded pharmacy and nursing building at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. A $31 million new cancer center at the University of Missouri-Columbia was also scratched.

Republicans threw the temper tantrum because Democrats Jolie Justus of Kansas City and Chuck Graham of Columbia delayed a vote on the bill with a filibuster.

The bill that will be up for final Senate approval on Monday raids the student loan fund to pay for miscellaneous pet projects of legislators who have cooperated with the Republican leadership.

The list has been assembled with no thoughtful analysis of the state's economic interests. And lawmakers have yet to see an independent financial analysis of the effect a sale of assets would have on MoHELA's ability to help students.

Neither the end nor the means are justified here. The Senate should quickly reconsider its support of this deeply flawed piece of legislation.