By BRENT MARTIN

St. Joseph Post

United States Sen. Roy Blunt came to St. Joseph to attend the Special Olympics Missouri Indoor Games.

Blunt remembers pushing through the “healthy athletes” initiative which provided routine health examinations for Special Olympians, such as eye screenings. He says he heard about the impact of the initiative while on a college campus which sponsored a Special Olympics event.

“Some young man walked up to me who had just gotten glasses that day, probably in his early 20s, and he said, ‘Man, softball’s a lot easier if there is only one ball,’” Blunt recalls with a chuckle. “He had been playing this sport for years as a Special Olympic athlete and nobody had ever caught the fact, and he wasn’t able to quite communicate the fact, that he was not seeing the ball like other people were seeing it. He didn’t know he wasn’t seeing it like other people were seeing it.”

The Special Olympics Missouri Indoor Games being held this weekend at the Southside Family Fun Center on King Hill Avenue in St. Joseph incorporates basketball and bowling.

Blunt has long supported Special Olympics and, as chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies he championed federal funding for Special Olympics.

Blunt is not surprised President Donald Trump rejected a proposal from his administration to cut $17.6 million dollars in federal funding for Special Olympics.

Blunt says the proposed cut was a non-starter in Congress.

“Again, it’s a very small part of Special Olympics’ total funding, but still important,” Blunt says. “And, I said we’re clearly not going to eliminate Special Olympics funding and the president the next day agreed with me and said, I think this is a great program, I think my staff’s wrong, and of course we’re going to continue to recommend that Special Olympics be funded at this small federal level that is has been in recent years”