State Sen. Jason Barrett sees himself as his constituents’ conduit to Jackson.
“District 39 is not my position. It’s your position,” Barrett, a Republican from Brookhaven, told the McComb Lions Club last week. “I’m there to be a voice for the people.”
The Thomasville, Ga., native, who was a teacher before becoming a lawyer, moved to Mississippi with his wife, a Monticello native he met when they were students at the University of Georgia.
He describes a Horatio Alger-type of life story, growing up in a singlewide trailer before becoming the first in his family to go to college.
His district was expanded into northern Pike County and northeastern Amite County after redistricting based on the 2020 Census population numbers for the state.
He has been named one of the five most conservative members of the legislature by the American Conservative Union in his brief tenure in Jackson, having taken office after a special election called when the previous senator, Sally Doty, resigned to become executive director of the state’s Public Utilities staff.
“I’m there to support the right ideals and vote my conscience,” Barrett said. “It’s an honor to represent conservative values.”
All conservatives are not created equal, however, and Barrett discussed how some of the issues considered in the legislature this year and in multiple years past split the now Republican-dominated government.
One of those was elimination of the state’s income tax, which was pushed especially by House Speaker Philip Gunn and other House leaders as an economic boost to the state and to citizens’ pocketbooks.
The Senate, led by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, favored a slowr approach with more study of the effects of eliminating the income tax on the state budget and the programs it funds.
The tax elimination “was presented under the guise of ‘more money in the people’s pockets’” Barrett said. “ Do I waant to pay less in taxes? Yes. Dp I want more money in my pocket? Yes. But the basic tenets of government need to exist. We want our roads to be driveable, for example.
“I’m for less taxes, but I don’t want to jeopardize our state. There may be benefits to reducing the tax burdern, but we shouldn’t do it at a cost to our citizens.”
He said other taxes on the state and local levels, like sales and gas taxes, would likely have to go up to maintain necessary services if the income tax were to be completely eliminated.
Barrett also pointed to expansion of Medicaid, the federeally subsidized program that offers health care assistance for the poor, as a contentious issue for legislators.
Some studies have found that Medicaid expansion to the working poor in the state would be a net benefit to the state, with the federal government picking the vast majority of the tab. The Mississippi Hospital Association has supported the idea, and broached ways to assist in financing the state’s required matching funds.
Barrett pointed out that GOP legislators fear the expansion could bankrupt the state, especially if the federal government decided to lessen its contribution to the program.
He said some legislators also see Medicaid expansion as “a reward for staying at home not pulling their weight.”
He said the strong possibility that the federal Roe vs. Wade decision — which allowed abortion nationwide — will be overturned by the Supreme Court this summer, could put a charge into efforts to expand Medicaid.
“There will be more mothers with newborns who will need medical treatment,” Barrett said. People who want expansion “will say, how can you be pro-life if you don’t provide care for these mothers and babies? On the other side, people will say, how can you be conservative if you give more medical care?”
He said medical marijuana is likely to be an “evolving” issue inthe legislature, and one that should have different rhetoric used to refer to its benefits and dangers.
Though he said he didn’t know of any other medicine a patient would smoke, “we want it for medical purposes,” Barrett said. “We need to drop the line that this will help our economy. We’re focusing on the money we’re going to make instead of the medical benefits. Then (the danger is) people will say, look at how much more money we can make if we legalize recreational marijuana.”
Barrett said he goes to Jackson to work for the people, and he urged citizens to call him and make their feelingss about bills and issues known.
“I don’t know what you want if you don’t tell me,” he said.
