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Before the Republican-led Missouri Legislature contemplated budget cuts as state revenue crashed amid the national pandemic and economic collapse.

Before unemployment reached record highs.

Missouri had already won the Race to the Bottom.

That鈥檚 the phrase that gets tossed around in civic and political circles every time the Show-Me state ends up first or last in another dubious national ranking. Like when Missouri ranked first in the nation in the number of children dropped from Medicaid 鈥� 100,000 and counting 鈥� before COVID-19 had even been discovered. Or when Missouri state workers became the lowest paid in the country, as a study found just a couple of years ago. Since that time, corrections workers have won a lawsuit for back pay and are still battling in court to get their money, while Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, refuses to honor their union contract.

Missouri is last again when it comes to public health, that oh-so-important state function that is now being relied on every day to help battle the coronavirus pandemic. According to the , the national average of state funding for public health is $33.50 per person. Missouri spends $6 for every resident.

Funding of the public defender system? Forty-ninth. Tobacco tax? Lowest in the country.

And then there鈥檚 higher education. When times get tough, it鈥檚 the first place many politicians look to cut. Since the coronavirus wreaked its economic havoc, Missouri鈥檚 colleges and universities have taken two cuts to their budgets, first when Parson withheld $61 million in April as the state鈥檚 revenue dried up, and again in the budget passed by lawmakers this month.

If all the federal aid comes through that makes the budget balance, colleges and universities will receive what is basically flat funding. If not, they face a cut of around $82 million. And that鈥檚 if there are no more withholdings.

For colleges and universities in Missouri, this is nothing new.

They were already the not-so-happy winners in Missouri鈥檚 Race to the Bottom.

The dubious victory shows up on created by the state鈥檚 preparing university presidents and the like for this year鈥檚 budget debate. On the last page is a graphic from of total higher education revenue in every state in the country. The graphic compares the change in funding per full-time student, including state sources and tuition, in every state in the nation between 2013 and 2018. Missouri ranks dead last.

In fact, Missouri is the only state to show a negative number. The nationwide average increase in higher education revenue was 12.9% in that time period. Missouri鈥檚 revenue declined nearly a full percentage point.

Most of that decrease came in state revenue. Because lawmakers limited tuition hikes, the back-door taxes passed on to parents by lawmakers in the form of increased tuition and fees were limited in a state that otherwise paid little attention to its institutions of higher learning.

Thank heavens for small favors.

The second graphic on the page is equally telling. It compares Missouri鈥檚 state funding for higher education, adjusted for inflation, between the 2010 fiscal year and the 2020 fiscal year. A decade ago, Missouri invested $281 million more in core university appropriations than it did in the most recent year.

As the state once again finds itself facing a massive recovery from economic disaster, as it did after the 2008 Great Recession, those numbers speak about what鈥檚 to come:

A state that still hasn鈥檛 recovered from the decline in revenue after that Great Recession has almost no chance to fully recover after the economic pain caused by the pandemic.

If Missouri鈥檚 higher education funding is worse now than it was then 鈥� as the annual report shows 鈥� then how bad are things going to get in the next few years?

The culprit is a combination of a constitutional and statutory framework that won鈥檛 let lawmakers react quickly to economic disasters when a revenue bump eventually comes, and a slavish GOP belief in Missouri that being one of the lowest-taxed states 鈥� while constantly giving large tax credit handouts to large corporations and wealthy investors 鈥� is a path to economic nirvana.

That has not been the case, and every time a new economic downturn arrives, Missouri鈥檚 place at the bottom of the nation鈥檚 economic pile is further entrenched.