The True Purpose
of Government
Missouri faces a budget reckoning. Before we debate cuts or tax increases, we must answer the deeper question: What is government actually supposed to do?
"To give security to these things is the principal office of government, and when government does not confer this security, it fails in its chief design."
— Missouri Constitution, Article I, Section 2 (still in force today)
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Terms with a dotted underlineLike this! Hover or tap any underlined term for a quick plain-language definition. can be tapped or hovered for definitions. Boxes marked 📖 What does this mean? translate complex ideas for everyday readers.
What the Founding Fathers Believed
America's founders were not vague about government's purpose. They wrote it down — repeatedly, clearly, and with conviction rooted in both reason and faith.
The Single Most Important Idea
The Declaration of IndependenceThe 1776 document declaring America's independence. Written primarily by Jefferson, it established that rights come from God — not government — and that government's only job is to protect them. states it plainly: people "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." Government did not create those rights. Its only legitimate job is to protect them.
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
📖 What does this mean?
Your rights — to live freely, own property, speak your mind — come from God, not from government. Government didn't give you those rights, so government can't take them away. Its only job is to guard them. Think of government as a security guard for your freedoms — not a parent who decides what's best for you.
George Washington
1st President · Commander-in-Chief
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports."
📖 Washington's Core View
Government is a necessary but dangerous tool — like fire. It must be kept in its proper place. Without religion and morality, no free government can survive. Liberty and virtue rise and fall together.
Thomas Jefferson
Author of Declaration · 3rd President
"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement... this is the sum of good government."
"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt... [it] is swindling futurity on a large scale."
📖 Jefferson's Core View
Government should only stop you from hurting others. Your business, your faith, your land — yours to manage. He called generational debt a moral crime. Missouri carries his vision directly in its current constitution.
James Madison
"Father of the Constitution" · 4th President
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
📖 Madison's Core View
Madison split power three ways because he knew politicians are fallible and self-interested. He explicitly said Congress has no right to spend on "benevolence" programs. Charity is not a government function — it belongs to families and communities.
Benjamin Franklin
Diplomat · Scientist · Founder
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it."
📖 Franklin's Core View
Real compassion means helping people become self-sufficient — not making poverty comfortable. Government handouts, he warned, ultimately harm the people they claim to help by creating lasting dependency.
John Adams
2nd President · Author of Massachusetts Constitution
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."
📖 Adams' Core View
The entire American experiment depends on a moral and religious citizenry. Without shared virtues, no constitution can restrain corruption. This is why Act for Missouri grounds its vision in both founding principles and Scripture.
Who Shaped the Founders?
The Founders were deeply read men. Their ideas came from specific thinkers. Tap each to expand.
Why he matters: Jefferson's Declaration is almost a direct philosophical restatement of Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1689). Locke created the concept of the social contract — government exists only to protect people's rights, and if it fails, people may replace it.
"The great end of men uniting into commonwealths is the preservation of their property."
Why he matters: Madison drew directly from Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1748) to design the three-branch system of federal government.
"When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person... there can be no liberty."
Why he matters: The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776 — the same year as the Declaration. Smith proved that free markets organize economic life better than government direction.
"Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way."
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." — Madison
Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England was the legal textbook every founding-era lawyer — Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton — studied. He grounded all law in God's natural law.
"The law of nature... is of course superior in obligation to any other. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this."
What Scripture Says About Government
The founders did not invent limited government. They recovered it from a tradition stretching back 3,000 years to the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
📖 Why does Scripture matter for government policy?
John Adams said the Constitution was made "only for a moral and religious people." Washington called religion and morality "indispensable supports" for free government. The founders believed a free society requires a people governed by shared moral principles — and that foundation starts with Scripture.
"For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad... he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer."
"Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution... to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good."
📖 What this means for Missouri's budget:
Paul and Peter give government exactly two functions: punish wrongdoers and protect the innocent. No mention of healthcare programs, economic development grants, or lifestyle support. Government is God's security guard — not God's social worker.
When Israel demanded a powerful king "like the other nations," God's response was not blessing — it was a detailed warning about what a powerful centralized government always does:
"He will take your sons... He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain... and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves."
God warned big government would:
- ✗ Conscript sons for government work
- ✗ Seize property for political allies
- ✗ Tax crops and productivity (the 10%)
- ✗ Create dependency ending in servitude
- ✗ Leave the people crying with no relief
📖 The deeper theological point:
Israel demanding a powerful king was God says, "rejecting me from being king over them" (v.7). Concentrated human government is a spiritual problem before it's a political one. The founders — many of whom knew this passage — designed the Constitution specifically to prevent this pattern.
"Look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens... Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves."
📖 This is the Bible's federalism — written 3,000 years before Madison:
Handle things at the lowest possible level. Only escalate what must be escalated. Require leaders who fear God and hate corruption. This is exactly what the 10th Amendment and Missouri's constitution are built on.
Scripture is unambiguous that the poor must be cared for — but equally clear about who is responsible and how.
1️⃣ Family First
"If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." — 1 Tim. 5:8
2️⃣ Church & Community
"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction." — James 1:27
3️⃣ The Gleaning Model
Leviticus 19 required private owners to leave a portion for the poor — who then had to work to receive it. Dignity. Personal responsibility. Not a government check.
📖 Notice what's missing from Scripture's chain of care:
Government nowhere appears. Family → Church → Community is the biblical order. Act for Missouri is not arguing against helping the poor — it's arguing for returning care to the bodies God assigned it to, because they do it better, with more dignity, and without creating dependency.
"If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat." — 2 Thessalonians 3:10
"You shall not steal." — Exodus 20:15
"They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid." — Micah 4:4
In 1 Kings 21, King Ahab arranged to have a citizen (Naboth) killed so the government could seize his vineyard. God's response through the prophet Elijah was fierce condemnation. Even the king — even for what he considered a good purpose — had no right to take what belonged to another person. The state is not above property rights.
📖 The biblical vision of prosperity:
"Every man under his vine and fig tree" — not collective ownership, not government redistribution, but every person secure in their own property. Government's job is to protect that security, not violate it through taxation, regulation, or seizure beyond what is necessary.
Missouri's Own Founders
Missouri's first constitution was written in 38 days by 41 delegates in a St. Louis hotel in 1820. What they built reveals exactly what they believed about government's purpose.
Missouri's Constitution — Still In Force Today
Every Missouri Constitution ever written — 1820, 1865, 1875, and 1945 — has opened with an explicit acknowledgment of God's authority above all human government. And the current constitution still defines government's purpose in language Act for Missouri stands on:
Article I, Section 2 — The Purpose of Government
"To give security to these things is the principal office of government, and when government does not confer this security, it fails in its chief design."
📖 What this means:
Missouri's own constitution already says government's job is to protect natural rights. When it spends billions on functions outside that mission, it is — by its own words — failing its chief design. Act for Missouri is calling Missouri back to its own founding commitment.
Preamble — 1875 & 1945 (Current)
"We, the people of Missouri, with profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and grateful for His goodness, do establish this Constitution for the better government of the state."
Article I, Section 1
"All political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole."
1820 Declaration of Rights, Section 2
"The people of this state have the inherent, sole, and exclusive right of regulating the internal government and police thereof."
Missouri's Founding Generation
David Barton
President, 1820 Constitutional Convention
Missouri's First U.S. Senator
Presided over the convention that wrote Missouri's first constitution. Signed the document. Elected Missouri's first senator by a large majority in 1820.
Core conviction: Distrusted populism built on "inflamed passions." Opposed programs he believed would benefit speculators rather than the genuinely poor.
Thomas Hart Benton
"Old Bullion" · 30 Years in U.S. Senate
Champion of Common People
The dominant political force of early Missouri. A fierce Jeffersonian who fought concentrated power — political or financial — wherever he found it.
"An institution too great and powerful to be tolerated in a government of free and equal laws." — on the Bank of the United States
His standard: Good government keeps "the debt and taxes low, allowing domestic industry to thrive."
Alexander McNair
Missouri's First Governor
Won by 72% — Biggest Landslide in State History
A frontier man who defeated the famous explorer William Clark by championing the common settler over the powerful speculator.
Won by campaigning against secret government — he believed citizens have a right to know what their government is doing.
Opposed high salaries for public officials (including himself) and life tenure for judges. All who hold power must be accountable.
What Missouri's Founders Added to the National Vision
Land = Liberty
For frontier Missourians, owning your own land was the foundation of freedom. "Every man under his vine and fig tree" — not theory but daily life.
Economic Power is Political Power
Benton showed that concentrated financial power is as dangerous as concentrated government power — and the two inevitably work together.
The Common Man is the Measure
"Does this help the small farmer or the wealthy speculator?" Missouri's founders asked this question consistently — and it drove their policy decisions.
God Above Government, Always
Every Missouri constitution begins by acknowledging the Supreme Ruler of the Universe. Not ceremony — the constitutional foundation beneath everything else.
The Six-Question Framework
Act for Missouri applies six questions — drawn from the Founders, Scripture, and Missouri's own Constitution — to evaluate every function of state government.
Q1 — Rights
Does this protect citizens' natural rightsRights that exist before government — to live freely, own property, speak your mind. The founders believed these come from God and cannot be taken away by any government. — life, liberty, or property?
→ YES = Fund it.
Q2 — Justice
Does this administer impartial justice or enforce contracts and laws equally for all citizens?
→ YES = Fund it.
Q3 — Order & Defense
Does this maintain public order or provide for common defense against threats to citizens?
→ YES = Fund it.
Q4 — Infrastructure
Does this provide essential shared infrastructure (roads, bridges) enabling commerce and community? Missouri's 1820 Constitution explicitly endorsed this.
→ YES for true public good: Consider it.
Q5 — Family & Church First?
Is this something families, churches, or communities should handle first? (1 Timothy 5, James 1, Leviticus 19)
→ YES = Keep government out.
Q6 — Dependency?
Does this create dependencyWhen people come to rely on government programs rather than family, community, or their own efforts. The founders believed this corrupts free people by replacing self-reliance with reliance on the state., concentrate power, or redistribute wealth from some citizens to others?
→ YES = Eliminate or reform it.
Three Tiers of Government Functions
✅
Tier 1
Core Government Function
Clearly within the founding framework. Fund fully. Only government can legitimately do this.
⚠️
Tier 2
Mixed Function
Keep what's legitimate. Restructure, transfer, or eliminate the rest. Click any agency to see what stays and what goes.
❌
Tier 3
Outside the Framework
Belongs to families, churches, communities, or free markets. Phase out state role as alternatives are established.
Missouri's Budget Through the Framework
Missouri's FY 2025 General Revenue budget: $14.95 billion. Roughly $1.8 billion is borrowed from prior-year savings — not sustainable. Here's what the founding framework says about each major spending area.
$50.47B
Total Operating Budget (FY 2025)
47.6%
Funded by Federal Government
$1.8B
Annual Structural Deficit
📖 What is the structural deficit?
During COVID, the federal government flooded Missouri with extra funds. Missouri saved much of it. Now we're spending those savings — about $1.8 billion more per year than we actually take in. When the savings run out, Missouri faces a real budget crisis. That is why this conversation is urgent now.
Judiciary & Courts
MO Supreme Court · Appeals · Circuit Courts · Public Defender
~$400M GR
Verdict: Fund fully. Impartial justice is the central purpose of civil government in every founding document — national, state, and scriptural. "Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society." — Federalist No. 51
✅ Everything stays
All courts. Public Defender. Family & probate courts. Victim services.
📜 Founding basis
Romans 13 · Deuteronomy 16:20 · Psalm 82 · Federalist No. 51
🏛 MO Constitution
"To give security to these things is the principal office of government."
Public Safety
Highway Patrol · National Guard · SEMA · Homeland Security
~$500M GR
~$1.1B total
Verdict: Fund fully. Protecting citizens from violence is government's first and most undisputed function. Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 are explicit: punish wrongdoers, protect the innocent. The ruler "does not bear the sword in vain."
Corrections
Correctional Facilities · Parole & Probation · Victim Services
~$520M GR
Verdict: Core function — fund fully. Punishing wrongdoers is the second explicit function Scripture assigns to civil government (Romans 13:4). Reentry programs that duplicate what faith-based organizations do should shift to church/nonprofit partnerships, which consistently produce better outcomes at lower cost.
Transportation (MoDOT)
Highways · Bridges · Aviation Safety · largely self-funded by gas tax
~$580M GR
~$4.69B total
Verdict: Explicitly endorsed by Missouri's 1820 Constitution. Roads and navigable waters are one of the few areas Missouri's founders specifically named as government's proper role. The gas tax (you pay for what you use) is the founder's model: those who benefit, pay. Largely self-funded and appropriately structured.
Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE)
K-12 Funding · Special Ed · State Standards · School Safety
~$3.99B GR
Largest GR line
Missouri's constitution requires public education. The founders endorsed it as essential for self-governance. The question is not whether — but how: who controls it, at what level, and with what accountability.
✅ Stays
Foundation formula to local districts. Special education. School safety. Basic academic standards (reading, math, science, civics).
🔄 Restructure
Maximum authority to local districts and parents. Expand school choice. Cut state administrative overhead that never reaches classrooms.
❌ Eliminate
State curriculum mandates beyond academic fundamentals. DESE programs duplicating local districts. Programs with no measurable academic outcome.
Department of Social Services (DSS)
Medicaid · TANF · Child Welfare · Child Support · SNAP admin
~$2.78B GR
~$15.24B total
The central budget debate. DSS contains both government's clearest mandates (child protection) and its most contested programs. The framework demands we sort them carefully and honestly.
✅ Clearly stays: Child Protection
CPS investigations · Foster care · Courts for children · Child Support Enforcement (compelling parents to fulfill their own obligations — 1 Timothy 5:8).
✅ Protect: Truly Vulnerable
Children's healthcare · Pregnant women · Severely disabled who cannot care for themselves · Emergency care for genuinely destitute. (Psalm 82:3)
🔄 Strengthen: TANF
Work requirements must have real teeth. Shorten benefit duration. Partner aggressively with faith-based organizations — they consistently achieve better outcomes.
❌ Reform: Able-Bodied Adults
Benefits without work, training, or job-search requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents. Franklin: "The best way to help the poor is not making them easy in poverty."
Department of Mental Health (DMH)
Forensic & court-ordered care · Dev. Disabilities · Crisis Services
~$1.58B GR
~$4.04B total
This category demands both honesty and genuine compassion. Missouri has a large population of individuals with severe mental illness — many unable to care for themselves. Protecting citizens from harm is a core function. But much of DMH today extends far beyond that core.
✅ Stays
Forensic & court-ordered psychiatric care. Crisis intervention. 24/7 care for severely disabled. Facility oversight & licensing.
🔄 Restructure
Shift delivery to faith-based & nonprofit providers. Government funds and regulates — it shouldn't be the primary operator. Community mental health centers should move toward nonprofit status.
❌ Transfer
Outpatient services for those with functional family support. Non-court-referred substance abuse → faith-based recovery programs (AA, Teen Challenge, etc.) consistently outperform government programs.
Higher Education & Workforce Development
UM System · Missouri State · Community Colleges · Job Centers
~$1.29B GR
~$1.46B total
✅ Stays
Community colleges. STEM, agriculture, professional programs. Extension services. Job Centers connecting workers to employment. Workforce training tied to real outcomes.
🔄 Restructure
Tie all funding to graduation rates and employment outcomes. Reverse administrator-to-faculty ratio growth. Universities that undermine community values while taking community funds deserve accountability.
❌ Eliminate
DEI offices and ideological programs — government must not fund partisan viewpoints (Lev. 19:15). Programs with no measurable workforce or civic value.
Department of Economic Development (DED)
Corporate incentives · Tax credits · Business attraction programs
~$150M GR
+~$907M in tax credits (FY2024)
The framework's clearest verdict. The entire premise of "economic development" — government picking winners, subsidizing businesses, directing private economic activity — contradicts the foundational principles of both the national and Missouri founders.
"Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread." — Thomas Jefferson
✅ Small core stays
Business regulatory framework (contract enforcement). Small Business Development Centers (information only, no subsidies). Tourism promotion of Missouri's shared assets.
❌ Eliminate
All corporate tax credits. Enterprise Zones. Film tax credits. Historic preservation subsidies for private developers. Any program taxing one business to benefit another.
↗️ Transfer to
Private chambers of commerce. Lower taxes and fewer regulations for ALL businesses equally — not selective deals for the politically connected. Equal rules; no favorites.
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```Act for Missouri: Statement of Principles
What we believe about government — grounded in Missouri's own Constitution, the National Founding, and Scripture.
Government authority comes from God.
All legitimate power originates with God and is delegated through the people's consent. No government is autonomous. Every ruler stands accountable to a higher authority than any election or majority. This is why every Missouri Constitution has opened with "profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of the Universe" — not ceremony, but constitutional foundation.
Rights come from the Creator — not from government.
The founders declared: people "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." Government did not give you life, liberty, or the fruits of your labor. It has no authority to take them away. Its only legitimate purpose is to secure those rights against those who would violate them.
Government exists to protect — not to provide.
Scripture is explicit: the ruler is "God's servant" with a narrow job — restraining wrongdoing and protecting the innocent (Romans 13). When government becomes a universal provider, it does not expand its mandate. It abandons it — becoming the very concentration of power the founders designed against.
The family is the first institution — not the last resort.
"If anyone does not provide for his relatives... he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." (1 Timothy 5:8). Government provision that displaces family responsibility does not help the poor. It restructures society around dependency rather than love — and ultimately harms those it claims to serve.
The church and community are the true safety net.
"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction." (James 1:27). What families cannot bear, communities and churches are called to carry. Government programs can fund outcomes. They cannot replicate relationship, accountability, or love.
Power must be limited, divided, and local.
Madison: "The accumulation of all powers in the same hands may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." The closer government is to the people, the more accountable it is. The further it grows from them, the more dangerous it becomes to the liberty it was created to protect.
Fiscal responsibility is a moral obligation.
Jefferson called generational debt "swindling futurity on a large scale." Missouri's constitution requires a balanced budget. Spending money we do not have, on functions outside government's proper role, is not generosity. It is both fiscal and moral failure — a burden imposed on our children without their consent.
"All political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole."
— Missouri Constitution, Article I, Section 1 · First written 1820 · Still in force today.
The Questions Missouri Must Answer
These are not simple questions. Act for Missouri offers them as starting points for honest public dialogue across the state.
Missouri cannot unilaterally eliminate federally-funded programs. The honest path forward:
- Advocate aggressively for block grants and maximum state flexibility
- Use every available 1115 waiver to impose work and responsibility requirements
- Build the faith/nonprofit infrastructure that must exist before government steps back
- Stop accepting new federal conditions that lock Missouri into expanded programs
This document does not advocate abandoning the genuinely destitute. It advocates returning the mechanism of their care to the bodies best suited to provide it: families first, then faith communities, then local associations, then — as a genuine last resort — the state.
Government provision tends to crowd out the more personal, dignified, and effective care that communities provide. This is not theory — it is the documented history of welfare expansion over 60 years.
A zero-based budget is a philosophical starting point, not an overnight plan. The responsible path:
- Establish the principle of what government is and is not for
- Stop creating new programs outside the framework
- Reform existing programs aggressively toward self-sufficiency and work
- Build faith/family/community infrastructure that must exist before government steps back
- Phase out state role as proven alternatives are established
This Conversation Needs Missouri Citizens
Act for Missouri is bringing this dialogue to communities across the state. We believe Missourians — when given the principles, the facts, and an honest question — will choose wisely.