MO Senate adjourns without approving House plan on initiative petitions

Game over for the Missouri Senate. 

The upper chamber adjourned for the year without negotiating with the House on a plan that would make it tougher to change the state constitution. 

House Speaker Dean Plocher stands by his chamber’s decision to vote against negotiating with the Senate, instead of passing the Senate’s version of the proposal, even if it jeopardizes Missouri’s near-total abortion ban. 

“We, the House, are not responsible for abortion that may pass in Missouri,” says Plocher. “I blame that squarely on the Senate, who has not taken it up and had an honest vote on it for six years.” 

On Twitter today, Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden said after Democrats blocked a vote on the measure for nearly 50 hours this week, he said there’s no way the Senate can get done in eight hours what it could not do in 50.