Rep. Crystal Quade to sponsor bills ending grocery taxes, restoring abortion rights

Looking towards the 2024 legislative session, Missouri House Minority Floor Leader Crystal Quade, D-Springfield, has a few big goals in mind, including abolishing the sales tax on groceries and restoring abortion rights in the state.

Quade, who is running for Missouri Governor in 2024, plans to file legislation aimed at accomplishing these objectives in the Missouri General Assembly. She has been endorsed in her gubernatorial campaign by Planned Parenthood, in an election year with debates sure to center around abortion.

Although varying ballot initiatives also aim to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution, Quade’s House Joint Resolution would, if passed, allow voters to decide the issue while bypassing the costly time-consuming process of signature collection facing the citizen-led ballot initiatives.

“I’m filing this House Joint Resolution so voters can finally have their say without the gimmicks and outright lies we’ve seen play out in the courts,” Quade said in an emailed statement. “While politicians have played with people’s freedoms, Missourians have suffered.”

Quade’s bill would face serious headwinds in a legislature dominated by Republicans, who are sure to be reluctant to budge on their anti-abortion beliefs. Republican State Sen. Mike Moon has even sponsored legislation that would levy criminal charges against a woman who receives an abortion in the state.

Other efforts to restore abortion rights and protect access to contraceptives have also faced resistance through numerous lawsuits delaying the signature collection process. Ballot language written by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and fiscal notes from Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick have been challenged by both organizations seeking to put differing abortion rights petitions on the 2024 ballot.

“The timeline is definitely a crunch, and I am not going to say that it's not,” Quade said. “That's by design. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, that was his intent, was to run out the clock and try every way that he could to continue to lose it in court.”

Missouri was the first state to enact a near-total ban on abortion following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year.

More: While one abortion legal saga ends, other advocates launch signature collection campaign

As for her plan to abolish grocery taxes, Quade’s legislation would establish a gradual end to the state sales tax on grocery items through a two-phase plan.

First, it would reduce the state tax rate on groceries from 1.225% to 0.5% then down to zero. Then, it would target municipal taxes on food, which can be as high as 8% in some parts of the state.

“Eliminating the grocery tax is the first step towards prioritizing making life more affordable for every Missourian,” Quade said. “From single moms to working class families, everyone will benefit from this change.”

Missourians would save about $1.6 billion, according to Quade, though that means that state and local coffers would be short that same amount in tax revenue. However, Quade’s legislation addresses the lost revenue for municipalities by creating a fund for them to recover the lost taxes.

“I definitely understand the concern that local governments may have with this conversation, but I believe that taxing groceries is ultimately more burdensome to low-income Missourians,” Quade said. “There are ways we can work with local governments to help shore up that lost revenue while they work to find alternative solutions.”

As for the lost state revenue, Quade has solutions for recouping the losses, such as taxing yachts, which are currently not taxed in Missouri, and adding a 1% tax on foreign-owned farmland.

“This bill is just the starting point of all of the many tax places that we can look to,” Quade said. “I'm hopeful that this conversation will continue to bring more ideas to the table.”

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Crystal Quade wants to abolish grocery taxes, restore abortion rights