JEFFERSON CITY, MO - This week in the Missouri Senate, Senator John Cauthorn, R-Mexico, headed up his first meeting as chairman of the Upper Chamber's influential and newly formed Governmental Accountability and Fiscal Oversight Committee.

"There's never been a better time to establish a committee like this one," Cauthorn said. "With the projected billion dollar deficit looming over us, this committee will allow us inspect state government and help increase our government's ability to effectively manage state programs."

Cauthorn and the full Senate strode across the Capitol rotunda earlier this week to hear the governor's state of the state address in joint session with the House. As it typically does each year, the governor's annual remarks centered on the budget, for which he proposed some three quarters of a billion dollars in tax increases to balance it.

"He's looking for seven hundred and fifty million dollars from the wallets and purses of Missouri's working people, without first looking into budget reforms and providing improved government efficiency," Cauthorn said. "On top of this, his budget numbers don't even balance out right, which just happens to be a constitutional requirement."

As a step in the right direction toward fiscal responsibility, Cauthorn and his Senate colleagues roundly rejected the recommendations of a state salary commission, which called for raising the pay of elected, and certain other, state officials.

"I guess it's nice the commission thought a raise was warranted," Cauthorn said. "But come on state workers haven't had a raise in more than two years and we're going to raise the pay of lawmakers? I don't think so."

The pay raise recommendation has raised the ire of Cauthorn and other legislators to the point where many are considering doing away with the salary commission all together.

Cauthorn this week also had the pleasure of meeting with a number of superintendents from schools throughout Northeast Missouri.

"No doubt about it, funding and sufficient funding at that was our number one topic," Cauthorn said. "We also talked at length about the increased roles teachers and administrators play in trying to solve our social problems instead of actually teaching."

Cauthorn's second week of the year's legislative session was capped off by earning membership on the Missouri Ethanol and Other Renewable Fuel Sources Commission. Senate President Pro Tem Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau, made the appointment rewarding Cauthorn's commitment to agriculture and his passion for promoting value-added ethanol production

"I've always fought hard to expand the market opportunities for ethanol and other innovative fuels, and our work as a commission will expand the opportunities of those in the business of producing and processing ag products, too," Cauthorn said.