Bill Eigel vows to slash budget, round up immigrants if elected Missouri governor

For most of his second term in the Missouri Senate, Bill Eigel has been a disruptor.

First with a homegrown Republican faction called the Conservative Caucus, and then with a state chapter of the national Freedom Caucus, Eigel led a small group willing to torpedo legislation to make their points heard.

It hasn’t won him many friends in the upper chamber. Eigel lost his chairmanship this year – and his Capitol parking spot – in a fight with GOP leadership that left Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin publicly musing about voting to oust him.

And in 2022, Eigel and state Sen. Mike Cierpiot of Lee’s Summit nearly came to blows as tempers flared over a congressional redistricting plan.

Members of the right-wing faction have been called “a small group of swamp creatures” and accused of turning the Senate into a “clown show” by Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden.

In response, Eigel and his allies have called Senate leaders “RINOS” – Republicans in Name Only – and described the chamber majority as a “uniparty” alliance of Democrats and Republicans.

Despite years of headlines about his combative tactics, February polling showed that far more Missourians had never heard of Eigel than had any opinion of him, good or bad. He was 22 percentage points behind the then-frontrunner, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft.

Six more months of almost ceaseless campaigning and a June poll showed Eigel had cut the number of respondents who didn’t know his name by more than half. Coincidentally, he received identical numbers – 19.2% – for statewide support and statewide ignorance of who he is.

The June poll showed him statistically tied with Ashcroft behind a new frontrunner, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe. It also showed that almost 40% of Republican voters are uncertain about their choice.

If Eigel becomes governor, he will be the first elected from the state Senate since Phil Donnelly in 1944. 

He’s running for governor to reset the agenda for Missouri and the state Republican Party, Eigel said.

“It’s the position of governor in particular that could really change the trajectory of not just the state but of the state party,” he said.

Born on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to parents from St. Louis, Eigel himself was in the Air Force from 1999 to 2007 and achieved the rank of captain. After leaving the service, he purchased a company now known as National Skylight Solutions and sold it in 2015, a year before he won election to the state Senate.

In office, his priorities have been fiscal restraint and for several years he’s called for abolition of the personal property tax, paid on motor vehicles, mobile homes, livestock and other items of movable property. The money paid in personal property taxes, about $1.7 billion annually that supports local schools and governments, can be replaced from the state treasury surplus, Eigel contends.

It will be his highest priority in his first year in office.

“We’re going to turn around and keep the local areas whole with the surpluses that we create,” he said.

Another personal priority is establishing a way for investors in gold and silver to use it in commercial transactions and to pay taxes. Collectible bullion coins minted by the United States have a nominal face value far below the market price of the metal content and can be used for those values only at a great loss.

But Eigel’s political personality has overshadowed his policy proposals. He’s promising to continue disrupting things as governor, posting a video last year using a flamethrower to torch boxes “representing what I am going to do to the leftist policies and RINO corruption of the Jeff City swamp” and criticizing Gov. Mike Parson for making an ad calling for political civility with the Democratic governor of Kansas. 

Eric Greitens, who was in office 18 months before being forced out by scandal, used social media and his PAC to attack Republican lawmakers who didn’t fall into line on his priorities. This year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton recruited and financed primary opponents to lawmakers who opposed them.

He “absolutely” would do the same, Eigel said, and thinks Greitens’ biggest failure was his lack of experience in state government.

“My experience for the past eight years in Jefferson City, seeing firsthand how much the status quo really doesn’t care about the struggles that everyday Missourians are going through, is going to help me avoid some of the pitfalls that the previous governor ran into,” Eigel said.

In the run up to the Aug. 6 primary, The Independent asked Eigel a series of questions with one theme – what would Missouri be like if he becomes governor? Here’s what he said:

Budget and taxes

Along with eliminating the personal property tax, Eigel promises to abolish the state income tax.

After several years of cuts, the top rate is currently 4.8% and in the fiscal year that ended June 30, the personal income tax accounted for 65% of general revenue collections.

Part of replacing the revenue, Eigel said, will be higher state sales taxes like the rates paid in states like Tennessee and Texas, two states without an income tax.

The statewide rate in Tennessee is 7% and in Texas it is 6.25%. Missouri currently charges 4.225% for a statewide rate, with 3% for general revenue purposes. 

Each 1% of Missouri’s general revenue sales tax generates about $1 billion. Shifting $3 billion would put Missouri’s state sales tax at 7.225%, the second-highest in the nation behind California.

Missourians already pay the 11th highest average sales tax rate in the nation at 8.38%, according to the conservative Tax Foundation. The reason is local option sales taxes that many states do not allow.

The rest of the savings, Eigel said, will come from budget cuts.

“There’s no question that a big part of my plan is going to be a massive reduction in the state expenditures,” Eigel said.

After Parson’s recent vetoes, the budget for the current year is $51.6 billion, including $15.1 billion in general revenue.

When he’s in charge, Eigel said, the cuts will include personnel, earmarked appropriations and entire state departments, like the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

“I don’t know that there’s a single department down there in Jefferson City that can’t find a way to be a heck of a lot more efficient than it is right now,” Eigel said.

There are thousands of state jobs unfilled because of staffing shortages – almost 13% of budgeted payroll was unspent in fiscal 2023.

And while Eigel said the existing workforce can be cut further, Missouri has a smaller public workforce than any state on its border except for Tennessee, according to the Rich States, Poor States report from the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Eigel also said his budget and tax agenda includes repealing the gas tax passed in 2021. The additional tax, currently 10 cents a gallon, has one more 2.5 cent step set to take effect on July 1, 2025.

Highway spending would be maintained from general revenue, Eigel said.

The tax increase was the first state fuel tax increase since 1992, when then-Gov. John Ashcroft – father of Jay Ashcfoft – signed a bill adding 4 cents a gallon. The 2021 increase was passed with strong backing from Kehoe and signed by Parson.

“Whether it was John Ashcroft or whether it’s Mike Kehoe or Mike Parson, when they sign on to these tax increases, they’re betraying the Republican brand,” Eigel said. “That’s not what we signed up to do.”

Education

The education of Missourians has been a responsibility of state government since the state was founded in 1821 with a constitution directing that “one school or more, shall be established in each township…”

This year, Eigel filed a bill to abolish the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and divide its duties among other agencies. But actually abolishing the department would require a statewide vote. It is one of the 15 departments authorized by name in the Missouri Constitution.

Under Eigel’s bill, Missouri would retain a state Board of Education and a Commissioner of Education, both also required by the constitution.

His proposal echoes a longstanding goal for many Republicans of abolishing the federal Department of Education.

“My call is not a call for an absence of government,” Eigel said. “We’re going to continue to comply with the state requirements. I just happen to think that we’ve got so much waste down there in Jefferson City that we’ve got a long way to go cutting away these different positions.”

Immigration

In 1838, Missouri Gov. Lilburn Boggs called out the state militia to handle a problem beyond the means of local law enforcement – the presence of Mormons.

“The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description,” Boggs wrote in the infamous “Extermination Order” that called out 1,800 men for service of the state.

Undocumented immigrants are the target for Eigel, who tells audiences he will invoke the post-Civil War clause giving the governor the power to declare an invasion of the state.

All the law enforcement power of the state will be focused on rounding up people who are not documented and transporting them to the border, he said.

“And if I have to drive the buses myself to the border of this country, we’re going to take our state back, folks,” Eigel said at a February campaign appearance.

He estimates that 50,000 to 70,000 people could be rounded up.

“We’re talking about individuals that can’t provide proof that they are legally allowed to be here in the United States,” Eigel said in an interview.

He promised humane treatment — he will ask for money to provide food, shelter and other necessities while the people are in custody — but he doesn’t think constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure or due process extend to undocumented immigrants.

“I don’t extend that protection to those that are breaking our laws and are here illegally,” Eigel said.

The primary

One undercurrent of this year’s GOP primary battles are that Republican voters could nominate three members of the Freedom Caucus – Eigel and fellow stateSens. Denny Hoskins of Warrensburg and Andrew Koenig of Manchester – for statewide office. 

Hoskins is running for secretary of state and Koenig is running for state treasurer.

There are also three of Gov. Mike Parson’s appointees in primary races, including Kehoe, State Treasurer Vivek Malek and Attorney General Andrew Bailey. 

The choices GOP voters make will determine whether the course set under Parson is acceptable or whether they are upset that more “big red things,” as Eigel puts it, haven’t been done.

“If you look at what’s going on in the national discussion right now, Donald J. Trump is winning America on this message of being a disruptor of the status quo in Washington, D.C.,” Eigel said. “We’re seeing that’s gonna play out the same way in Jefferson City.”

This article has been updated to correct that the 1992 fuel tax increase was the last time the tax was increased.