Creating and approving the state budget is among the most fundamental duties that Missouri legislators must carry out. That annual document is ultimately supposed to be a fiscal expression of the will of the taxpayers who fund it. It's likely that a great many of those taxpayers, whatever their politics, would agree with Democratic budget proposals like raising teachers' pay, creating more after-school programs and (in light of the continuing scourge of school shootings in Missouri and nationally) improving school safety.

Yet House Republicans in budget negotiations last week turned back those constructive ideas to focus instead on culture-war catnip like prohibiting state contracts for businesses that promote diversity and yanking public library funding to punish librarians for opposing censorship. Once again, the majority party in state government is prioritizing ideological pandering to the extreme right over sober public service to Missourians as a whole. Missouri Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden said he would remove these distractions as the Senate takes up the budget, but it still speaks volumes about the extremism rattling around this Legislature.

A budget amendment by state Rep. Doug Richey, R-Excelsior Springs, would prohibit state government from paying for staff, vendors or programs "associated with diversity, equity [and] inclusion." As the Post-Dispatch's Kurt Erickson reports, the real-world effects of Richey's amendment could be to cancel some of Missouri's biggest and most important service contracts with vendors like Ford Motor Co., Aramark food services and Maryland Heights-based World Wide Technology, all of which tout — gasp! — diversity and inclusion in their promotional materials.

Never mind that these companies are merely reflecting an increasingly diverse and tolerant American society (with, as always, their eye on their bottom line). And never mind that this crusade effectively scuttles the GOP's long-held principle of opposing governmental interference with private enterprise. Never mind any of that — Richey is determined to ensure that anyone who wants to do business with the state of Missouri must display the requisite intolerance and exclusion.

Meanwhile, state Rep. Cody Smith, R-Carthage, seeks to cut the state's entire $4.5 million budget for public libraries in response to library lawsuits over the state's move to ban certain books from school collections — to punish these institutions for standing up against censorship, in other words. The ability to appreciate irony is apparently in short supply in Jefferson City.

Smith, it should be noted, earlier suggested that Gov. Mike Parson's laudable request of $134 million for child-care subsidies should be reduced. These are the priorities of Missouri's ruling party: Spend the taxpayers' time and money belittling diversity and attacking libraries while denying needed raises to teachers and needed child care to parents. These aren't the actions of a functioning political party, but of a cult of populist demagoguery.

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