State Senator, Missouri's 26th District • Father • Patriot • Former Professional Mixed Martial Artist
Washington, MO
Joined April 2010
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Ben Brown retweeted
My friend @BenBrownTweets speaking to Gasconade County Republicans about fiscal responsibility and Amendment 7.
#YesOn7
What a great day at the Eureka Days Parade!
I’m thankful to everyone who came out and made it such a fun community event. It was great seeing so many friends and neighbors along the parade route and enjoying some beautiful fall weather in Eureka.
I also enjoyed running into my friend and colleague, State Representative Holly Jones, along the way!
A special thank you to all of our #TeamBrown volunteers who took time out of their Saturday to walk with us. I’m incredibly grateful for your friendship, support, and willingness to always show up.
Eureka Days is one of those traditions that reminds you what makes our communities so special. Thank you, Eureka, for another great parade! 🇺🇸
Ben Brown retweeted
Last night Missouri State Senator @BenBrownTweets shared how COVID rules pushed him into office. St. Louis County issued hundreds of pages of law with no vote or public comment. Threatened with fines and jail, he kept his restaurant open.
“Courage can be contagious."
Ben Brown retweeted
Missouri’s political news headlines for Sun. 9/20/26:
🤔 @DOJFraudDiv highlights MO “Fur Lives Matter” scheme
☢️ @BenBrownTweets leads #moleg effort on abandoned landfills
🐈🐈⬛🍷 St. Joe “Persisterhood” vs. GOP-backed amendments
johncombest.com/2026/09/20/s…
This week I had the opportunity to lead a bipartisan coalition seeking to address an environmental catastrophe that has plagued our state for decades. The newly formed Select Committee on Abandoned Landfill Remediation met to discuss solutions to the nearly 30 unaddressed abandoned landfills that have been poisoning our land and waters for far too long. This is a problem that grows exponentially with each passing year, the worst of which is believed to be the site of the Generally Landfill right here in District 26. Testing has shown a great deal of water contamination and toxic leachate leaking from this site, including watershed into the Meramec River.
I'd like to say thank you to everyone who took time out of their day to participate in this conversation, and I look forward to working with the Department of Natural Resources and various stakeholders as we work towards a solution to this pressing issue.
If you would like to view the hearing in its entirety, footage can be found at the link below. media.senate.mo.gov/SelectCo…
Ben Brown retweeted
Let’s get the SAVE Act past the finish line!
The SAVE Act STOPS non-citizens from registering and voting in federal elections, and nearly 90% of Americans oppose noncitizen voting.
The other week I joined @HughHewittShow to discuss Missouri's Amendment 5, my background, and what prompted me to first get involved in the political process.
youtu.be/FDKhcZDstPw?is=xBNe…
A lot of people have asked for my thoughts on the amendments that will be on the ballot this Tuesday. Long read but if you'd like to see where I stand on these amendments and why here you go!
AMENDMENT 2
Amendment two really only pertains to Jackson County who has had significant issues with skyrocketing property tax assessments due to the fact that their Assessor had not been elected by the people and was instead an appointed position. This amendment would change that and bring Jackson County in line with every other county in the state. I am a YES on 2 because I believe that the person responsible for something as impactful as your real estate taxes should be directly accountable to the taxpayers paying their salary.
AMENDMENT 4
I believe amendment 4 is by far the most important thing on the ballot. Missouri is one of only 18 states that adopted our current initiative petition process which has served as a backdoor loophole allowing well funded, outside special interests to essentially purchase amendments to the constitution. One recent example of it's impact was when a foreign funded group called The Sixteen Thirty Fund poured millions into our state to pass an amendment that overturned a statewide ban on abortion and leave us with some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country. For some time Missouri has been one of the prime targets for progressive special interests. As of the last election cycle we actually ranked number three in the nation for most foreign dollars pouring into our state aimed at infusing our state constitution with progressive ideology. In fact one of the largest funders of these amendments in Missouri and elsewhere has been Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Weiss, who was quoted in his biography as stating one of his life goals was to "reimagine the US constitution in the light of progressive politics. I highly recommend a quick Google search on the man if you are unfamiliar with him.
Opponents of Amendment 4 like to refer to our IP process a "citizen led" process, however history tells us nothing could be farther than the truth. A more fitting description would be "special interest led". Here is some food for thought. Since it's adoption in 1908 I have not been able to find one successful truly grassroots effort to use this process to amend the constitution. The fact that some still call it a “citizen led” initiative petition process is a farce. The IP process does not in reality give everyday citizens access to the ballot. The only ones who successfully use this tool are the extremely wealthy elite. Is it a right if you have to pay 10 million dollars to use it? The ability to influence your state constitution should not be directly tied to your net worth.
In addition, this amendment also contains provisions that enshrine in our constitution a ban on all direct or indirect foreign donations in support of or in opposition to any ballot measures, and establishes a crime of signature fraud. This is important because many of these amendments are relying on out of state vendors to send petitioners to Missouri to collect the required number of signatures, often operating with very little accountability since they simply leave the state after the job is done.
If you want to see outside interests continue to pour money into our state to permanently inject our constitution with progressive policy after progressive policy, vote no on Amendment 4.
If you want to put an end to outside influence in our elections, close this loophole that the majority of states were fortunate enough to never adopt in the first place, and protect our state constitution, ensuring Missouri’s constitution reflects Missouri values, vote YES.
The government the founding fathers envisioned was a republic rather than a direct democracy for a reason, and they consistently warned against governing on the "whims of the majority". I enthusiastically recommend a yes on Amendment 4!
"A republic if you can keep it"
-Benjamin Franklin
AMENDMENT 5
Amendment 5 can be broken down to two parts. The first part is the portion that is mandatory, which is a requirement for the legislature to continue the revenue triggers currently in place that have lowered the income tax rate to where it is now. Instead of stopping at 4.5%, we would be required to allow the triggers to continue all the way down to 0%. If this is all that passed the legislature, there would be no impact to any other taxes.
This would allow us to continue the decreases to the income tax rate, however it would take quite some time to get to zero. Even if this was all we did, we would likely get our income tax rate down into the 3-4% range before stalling out for a period of time. This would still put our income tax rate as the second lowest in regards to Missouri and the 8 states that border us.
Why is this important? Between inflation, reductions in federal funding and other factors the trajectory of our state's finances are looking bleak if we do not break the cycle of stagnation and start growing. There is no other metric that serves as a better indicator/catalyst of population growth than the state income tax rate and I have the receipts that support this. While we only conduct a census every ten years, there are other resources that have historically accurately tracked population migration trends from year to year. One such resource I have used is the annual U-Haul Growth Index. Every year this report is published ranking every state, with those at the top seeing the most growth and those at the bottom seeing the most population loss. When I pulled this data last year and started plugging in income tax rates to see what correlation there might be, the results were staggering. What I found was that out of the top 5 states seeing the most success, 3 out of those 5 had an income tax of 0%. If you expand that out a little you see that 4 out of the top 7 had a rate of 0%.
I then decided to dig a little further and on a spreadsheet I recorded the ranking and income tax rates of only Missouri and the 8 states that border us. After all these are the states that we are in the most direct competition with. Missouri only raked 6th out of 9 in terms of population growth or loss. What was interesting was that we also ranked exatly 6th in terms of lowest income tax rate. What was even more interesting was that the ALL 5 states that had a lower income tax rate were also the states who out ranked us in terms of population growth. ALL 3 states that had a higher income tax were the states that ranked behind us. Just to be clear, I am in no way claiming that income tax rate is the sole determination people use when deciding where to live, work and raise a family, but the data shows it is pretty undeniable that it is one of the most predominant ones.
The second part of Amendment 5 is an optional portion which if the legislature chose to pursue would allow them to expedite the elimination of the income tax through an expansion of the sales tax base allowing services and digital products which are not currently subject to them. As it stands now, generally only business owners who provide products are subject to sales tax. Maybe it's the fact that I am a former restaurant owner, but I always felt that this uneven application felt as if the government was picking winners and losers. This would create a uniform system for all businesses with the exception for any transactions associated with real estate, agriculture and medical expenses. While there would be services that would be subject to sales tax that previously weren't any flow through entity such as an LLC would no longer have that 4.7% income tax coming out of their profit margin, which would allow them to lower prices. While in an area where there might be only one single barbershop, etc. in town, a business may choose to keep this profit, though that would be openly inviting a competitor to open up shop.
The reality is that most businesses are in a relatively competitive market where choosing to do so would result in their competition undercutting them and forcing their hand.
What about Hancock? IF the legislature pursued this second option, some opposing this amendment claim that this would suspend the taxpayer protections created by the Hancock Amendment. While it is true that shifting some of the source of our revenue to sales tax would require a temporary technical change to how Hancock is applied, it still 100% preserves its effect and intent. The intent of Hancock is to prevent the overall tax liability of Missourians from increasing without them having a say. This amendment continues this through multiple mechanisms embedded within.
1. It directly states that any legislation that expands the sales tax base must also include a proportionately equal reduction in the income tax.
2. One year into the new system, if the state has received any addional revenue as a result of an expansion, the state auditor must begin redirecting those funds back to the taxpayer in the form of a proportionately equal reduction in the state sales tax rate.
3. One year into the new system, if local governments have received any additional revenue as a result of an expansion, they must also redirect those funds back to the taxpayer, either through a proportional reduction in the local sales tax rate, a reduction in personal or real property taxes, or a reduction in the local earning tax where applicable.
For years I have watched as Missouri's population growth has flatlined while our neighbors reap the benefits of adopting tax policies with lower income tax rates, encouraging productivity and contributions to the economy, rather than punishing people for them. For the fist time our state actually has an opportunity to really establish itself as a leader in the region rather than continue to lag behind. This is why I am a YES on Amendment 5.
Ben Brown retweeted
On the "A5 guts taxpayer protections" claim, here is the whole ledger:
✅️ Phase-out only as revenue grows.
✅️ Any restructuring revenue-neutral or less.
✅️ School funding protected.
✅️ A 5-year window.
✅️ Legislature keeps power to exempt groceries and prescriptions.
✅️ Older limits swapped for a tighter set built for one job.
Judge it on that.
Ben Brown retweeted
Americans deserve elections they can trust, and that begins by protecting them from corrupting foreign influence in our politics.
That’s why @apublictrust launched a first-of-its-kind tool that tracks foreign funding in politics.
Transparency matters! 👉FollowForeignMoney.org
Amendment 4 is by far the most important thing on the ballot. Missouri is one of only 18 states that were conned into creating a backdoor loophole to allow changes to our constitution. This is how we went from a near abortion ban to having some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country. As a result Missouri has been one of the prime targets for progressive special interests and ranks number three in terms of most foreign dollars pouring into our state to essentially “purchase” amendments to our constitution. (Google Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Weiss to learn more)
Here is some more food for thought. Since 1908 there has not been one successful truly grassroots effort to use this process to amend the constitution. The fact that proponents call it a “citizen led” initiative petition process is a farce.
So if you want to see outside interests continue to pour money into our state to permanently inject our constitution with progressive policy after progressive policy vote no on Amendment 4.
If you want to put an end to the outside influence in our elections and put an end to this loophole that the majority of states were smart enough to never enact in the first place, if you want to protect our state constitution and ensure Missouri’s constitution reflects Missouri values vote YES!
"A republic if you can keep it"
-Benjamin Franklin
Yes on Amendment 4 protects the Missouri constitution. We are one of only 18 states which let's citizens change the constitution but our Initiative and Petition process is one of the most lax so we are a target for special interests who have added 126 amendments to the Missouri constitution since 1945. We added 4 amendments in 2024 alone- including abortion on demand. 20% of our state constitution is about marijuana. This is not right.
The U.S. Constitution has been amended only 27 times since 1788. Voting Yes on 4 protects the fact we are a constitutional republic and not a direct democracy. Save our republic! #YesOn4 #republic #AmyDeClue
Ben Brown retweeted
It's cool guys just Hillary Clinton's lawyer working for opponents of Amendment 4👇
Ben Brown retweeted
Cancel the August recess
The Senate has unfinished business.
American citizens should not have to wait while Washington takes a month-long vacation. . Stay in session. Debate the SAVE America Act—and pass it.
No days off until American elections are protected.
