Quote:Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback ® "choked up" during a private meeting with Kansas House Republicans over discussions on closing the state's $400 million budget deficit.

"He got emotional," an unnamed legislator who attended the private meeting said, according to the Topeka Capitol-Journal reported on Wednesday. "He was eager for us to come together as a party."

Another lawmaker said Brownback described making budget cuts "really difficult to do before."

Brownback's office didn't respond to requests for comments by the Kansas newspaper.

In the Tuesday meeting, according to the Capitol-Journal, Brownback expressed concern that if House and Senate lawmakers didn't come to a deal he would have to order sweeping 6 percent cuts across the state's budget.

Brownback, according to legislators at the meeting, also recalled all the public criticism he's received over the dim state of Kansas's budget, including being booed at a NCAA game in Omaha between two Kansas universities —Wichita State and The University of Kansas.

Very early Friday morning, the Kansas House was able to pass a compromise bill that aims to fill the $400 million budget deficit. The bill did not pass until 4 a.m., according to The Wichita Eagle.

The state's budget has been an ongoing problem for Brownback thanks to the deep tax cuts he's put in place. The resulting shortfall has forced the very conservative Kansas governor to look at any possible option to improve the state's finances, even expanding Medicaid through Obamacare, a cardinal sin for Republicans.

Quote:A tax plan crawled to passage in the Kansas House in the early hours Friday morning, after Gov. Sam Brownback warned lawmakers that massive budget cuts would occur Monday if they failed to act on taxes.

The House began debate on a pair of bills at 1:30 a.m. meant to plug the state's nearly $400 million budget hole. It did not pass until after 4 a.m.

But Republican lawmakers stressed the urgency of passing a bill now rather than later with the state staring down massive cuts if lawmakers failed to act.

The first bill, SB 270, scraped by with 63 votes, the bare minimum for passage, and the second, HB 2109, initially fell four votes short: 59-48 in favor with another 19 representatives.

House Speaker Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, invoked a rule known as "the call of the House," which pauses the vote and requires the Kansas Highway Patrol search for missing representatives. Merrick and other Republican leaders picked up their phones and aggressively pressed colleagues to back the bill.

"I need some movement," the speaker emphatically said into his phone within earshot of reporters seated nearby.

The call lasted more than two hours before Rep. Blake Carpenter, R-Derby, cast the deciding vote after 4 a.m. Carpenter left the House chamber before answering questions.

"Sometimes it's hard to get 63 votes," Merrick reflected after the bill passed. "That's the way the process works. It's a hard vote for Republicans raising taxes. It's a real tough vote for me."

Before the pair of bills can go to the governor's desk the Senate will have to pass SB 270, which is not a necessarily guaranteed.

"It moves that last train down the track," Merrick said about the House vote.

The two bills generate $384 million in revenue, which if added to other legislation passed this year, would fill the state's shortfall and leave the state with a razor thin $36 million ending balance in fiscal year 2016, which begins in July. House leaders are also counting on the governor to issue $50 million in unspecified budget cuts of his own to bring the total to $86 million.

Rep. Marvin Kleeb, R-Overland Park, told his colleagues that if they failed to pass the bill then the state would be plunged into financial crisis. He asked them to be statesmen and support it.

The House plan -- if both bills become law -- would raise the sales tax from 6.15 percent to 6.5 percent on July 1, which would bring in about $164 million in revenue.

Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita, criticized this provision, noting that Kansas already has the highest sales tax in the region and the second highest tax on food in the nation. The hike on the state rate when combined with local taxes would give Kansas the highest tax on food in the nation, he argued.

The House plan lacks a reduction to the sales tax rate on food that had been included in a plan previously passed by the Senate. Republican lawmakers promised to revisit the issue during next year's legislative session.

The House plan includes the governor's proposal to eliminate income taxes for 380,000 low-income Kansans starting in tax year 2016. Some analysts have warned that low-income Kansans will still end up paying more taxes overall because of the sales tax hike.

Republican leaders made a case that the bill was necessary to prevent cuts to state services.

Rep. Ron Highland, R-Wamego, who serves as House Education chair, argued that failing to pass the bill would put the state's schools in jeopardy.

"And we all know that," he admonished.

Governor's warning
Brownback and top administration officials warned that massive budget cuts would have to be enacted Monday if lawmakers fail to pass a tax plan that fills the state's budget hole at a rare joint caucus meeting of House and Senate Republicans.

"We're at day 112. ... We're at Thursday. By Monday you have to come up with something," Brownback said.

Jim Clark, the secretary of administration, told the meeting that his department needs to begin entering budget information into the state's accounting system Monday in order to ensure that payments to agencies go out on time when the fiscal year starts July 1.

State law forbids an unbalanced budget. That leaves a limited set of options.

Budget director Shawn Sullivan said the governor could veto the entirety of the state's $15 billion budget or he could use line item vetoes to fill the state's nearly $400 million shortfall.

For example, Sullivan said, issuing line item vetoes of combined state budgets for Wichita State University and the state's other regents institutions would fill the shortfall, or the administration could proceed with a 6.2 percent across-the-board budget cut that would cost Kansas public schools nearly $200 million.

The Kansas Board of Regents released a statement Thursday evening decrying the floated cut, calling it an "unprecedented situation."

"To completely defund higher education will have a devastating and long-lasting effect on students, families, businesses, and the entire economy of the State of Kansas," said Andy Tompkins, president and CEO of the Board of Regents.

Sullivan said all of these were horrible choices. He said that eliminating higher education funding was "not a permanent solution obviously."

Brownback called on lawmakers to pass a tax plan instead to avert the budget slashing.

"Now is the time you've got to act," he said. "You've just got to act."

During the House debate, Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, accused the governor of making threats to in order to get his way. The plan leaves an income tax exemption for business owners, which the governor has championed, largely untouched -- apart from a tax on guaranteed payments to partners of limited liability corporations, which many lawmakers say will be easy to dodge.

Ward said that the cost of leaving more than 330,000 business owners' income untaxed had passed the costs onto the poor and working class. "Why do we expect the little guy to continue to pick up the tab?" he said.

After the vote, Ward did not hide his disappointment.

"It's like a Greek tragedy. You knew what the ending was going to be," Ward said. "You just hoped against hope it would be different."

Rep. John Whitmer, R-Wichita, a freshman lawmaker, came to the House lectern sobbing to urge his colleagues to vote in support of the bill.

"I voted for something I am not proud of, but I feel it's what the folks need," Whitmer said in tears.

Whitmer and other conservatives who had resisted passing a tax increase for most of the marathon legislative session lined up in support of the bill after a grueling day.

(06-14-2015, 08:25 PM)xxlt Wrote: And I will wager if he runs Brownback has a good chance at re-election. And I just about guarantee a R majority in both state houses. You can't fix stupid, and sadly the voters got what they voted for, and will probably continue to vote for.

Quote:After giving Gov. Sam Brownback ® a free hand to turn Kansas into a science lab for hard-right policy experiments for more than five disastrous years, voters finally yanked the leash Tuesday night. At least 11 separate conservative members of the legislature lost their primaries to more moderate Republicans in the state, with a number of contests still too close to call with confidence.


While the wave won’t unlock the statehouse doors for Democrats, who are dramatically outnumbered in both House and Senate, the primaries signal that voters share the frustration that some Kansas Republicans have begun to voice with Brownback’s unbreakable commitment to trickle-down economic policies that have left Kansas so insolvent it can’t pay for a basic public education system.

The change will be most sweeping in the 40-seat Senate, where there are currently four Republicans for every Democrat. A full quarter of seats there will be filled with a more moderate butt next year. Conservatives lost 10 out of the 16 state Senate primaries the party ran Tuesday night.



Kansas Uses Sex Toy Auction To Help Close Budget Gap
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Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce headlines the 2017 departures list. Bruce lost to Ed Berger by a roughly 1,500-vote margin -- or 14 percentage points in a small district where many Democrats had re-registered as Republicans to help defeat him.

Berger spent three decades running a local community college before announcing his run in 2015. Bruce, by contrast, has worked in politics for decades and held office himself since 2005.

Brownback lost five other Senate allies in Tuesday’s primaries in addition to his Majority Leader. A special education administrator named Bruce Givens beat Sen. Forrest Givens, “one of the most conservative” people in the legislature.

Kansas conservatives got bloodied despite large cash expenditures from their allies. Brownback himself dropped $100,000 on various races and the state Chamber of Commerce spent another $300,000 to boost many of the men and women who lost Tuesday night.

In the 125-seat House, six out of 97 sitting Republican members lost their primary. Five of those were conservatives in the relatively well-off suburbs of Kansas City “where voters have cherished good public schools for decades,” the Topeka Capital-Journal notes.


Kansas Supreme Court Orders Lawmakers To Fix School Funding That's Biased Against Poor Districts
[url=http://thinkprogress.org/education/2016/02/17/3750219/kansas-supreme-court-school-funding/]
Brownback’s tax policies have ruined Kansas’ finances from root to branch, creating a nearly billion-dollar budget hole across all state services. But his experiment with eliminating all income taxes for anyone who decides to file as a small business hit schools hardest.

The state was already underfunding education before the former U.S. Senator lobbed a grenade into the balance sheet.

After Brownback’s cuts, lawmakers careened from one unconstitutional solution to another while school employees scrambled to keep the lights on. In some districts, school nurses were forced to replace ice packs with frozen sponges because of budget cuts.

(08-04-2016, 08:03 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Well not every idea works. Money has to come from somewhere. of course Libs are going to be all over this one, but their policies aren't always the best either. It takes a mix of both sides cooperating to be truly successful.

Quote:Sam Brownback kills report that would show how his Tea Party policies destroyed the Kansas economy




Kansas Governor Sam Brownback enacted his grand “tea party experiment” of Republican government, where he and his Republican-led legislature cut taxes and significantly reduced spending. The result has been catastrophic for the state’s economy and for jobs, but a report that would detail just how catastrophic is now being censored by the Brownback administration.

According to a shocking Kansas City Star report, Brownback set up a group in 2011 that would put out quarterly reports showing the impact of Brownback’s economic laws. His problem, of course, is that the reports don’t show what he hoped they would. Instead, they reflect the downward spiral of the Kansas economy thanks to Brownback’s failed policies.

Last January, Brownback tried to hide the report when it showed something he didn’t like. Now, they’re going a different route and killing the report entirely. Brownback had hoped that the report would reflect a sudden jolt of economic excitement with the tax cuts. Now, they show that “Kansas sometimes was faring worse than it had before Brownback became governor.”

The administration flatly rejects this account of where the report went, claiming it was always too complicated for people to understand.
“A lot of people found them helpful, but a lot of people were confused by them,” said Nicole Randall, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Commerce.

The Topeka Capitol Journal reports, the council will instead focus on a report authored by the U.S. Federal Reserve for information.

But some see it as a coverup for Brownback’s failure.

“He specifically asked the council to hold him accountable through rigorous performance metrics,” said Heidi Holliday, executive director of the Kansas Center for Economic Growth. “Five years later, the metrics clearly show his tax experiment has failed while business leaders and local chambers of commerce across the state openly ask him to change course.”

According to House Minority Leader Tom Burroughs, Brownback has missed every benchmark the council set to determine the success of the policies.

“The missed revenue marks, missed job reports, missed projections shed light on his failed policies. I kind of find it a little ironic they chose to go to a federal government report after they blamed President Obama for our economic problems,” Burroughs said.

(09-29-2016, 10:07 AM)samhain Wrote: This is what I fear will happen here in Kentucky if Matt Bevin succeeds in getting his policies though.  He's a carbon-copy of Brownback in almost every way.  To make things worse, he's a carpetbagger from the Northeast.  He'll tear shit up and hit the road when he's done with his middle finger in the air.  He's already had two judges smack down budget policies over the course of the last week.

Fortunately for us, I doubt he'll have as easy of a time getting re-elected as Brownback.  Kentucky surprisingly doesn't elect that many Republican governors.  This guy got in because voter turnout was ridiculously low with the exception of evangelicals who got rewarded for actually participating in the election.

(09-29-2016, 10:07 AM)samhain Wrote: This is what I fear will happen here in Kentucky if Matt Bevin succeeds in getting his policies though.  He's a carbon-copy of Brownback in almost every way.  To make things worse, he's a carpetbagger from the Northeast.  He'll tear shit up and hit the road when he's done with his middle finger in the air.  He's already had two judges smack down budget policies over the course of the last week.

Fortunately for us, I doubt he'll have as easy of a time getting re-elected as Brownback.  Kentucky surprisingly doesn't elect that many Republican governors.  This guy got in because voter turnout was ridiculously low with the exception of evangelicals who got rewarded for actually participating in the election.

(09-29-2016, 11:21 AM)Benton Wrote: OT a bit, but I will say at least the guy gives you something to talk about. From taking a political opponents' mother's name off a building just to mess with him, to making videos inside the legislature about lawmakers taking time off (of course, he had to wait until they weren't convened to make the video). The next few years are going to be spent with people shaking their heads a lot.

I am kind of curious to see what he hangs his next campaign on, though. Unless there's a major turnover with the reps (which isn't likely), he's not getting right-to-work through, which is where a lot of his monetary support came from. Throwing money at ark park will be a mix. Getting troopers raises was good, but it won't be enough, especially not after cutting education funding.

(10-02-2016, 02:55 AM)JustWinBaby Wrote: Yes, this is proof we should always raise taxes.  Because any moron knows taxes don't trickle down...

(10-02-2016, 02:55 AM)JustWinBaby Wrote: Yes, this is proof we should always raise taxes.  Because any moron knows taxes don't trickle down...

(10-02-2016, 07:09 AM)treee Wrote: No one is arguing with you that you can go too far in the other direction too. You were right in your earlier post that it takes healthy amounts of moderation to avoid fiscal disaster. That said, I think policies focused on increasing the GDP would be a healthier attitude for a government than just cutting expenses.

(08-04-2016, 09:02 PM)GMDino Wrote: And that is what Kansas had.  There's a whole book devoted to it and how Brownback came in and screwed it all up with his policies.  As the more conservatives got more power they drove it further and further into the hole.  It was always the moderates and the ones crossing party lines who made the state work.  

(10-02-2016, 12:54 PM)Aquapod770 Wrote: And in places where Dems have the most power things are just as shitty. It's almost as if our government was designed to work on a system of checks and balances...

(10-02-2016, 12:58 PM)GMDino Wrote: Checks and balances don't mean crap when one side or the other refuses to compromise on anything at all.

(10-02-2016, 01:01 PM)Aquapod770 Wrote: Fair enough. The biggest problem with our government right now is the lack of compromise from both sides. 

(10-02-2016, 12:24 AM)samhain Wrote: I'm pretty confident that he's one and done.  The lazy electorate is on to his game at this point.  Once they have a four-year look at what he has in store, they'll put him out on his ass.  Kentucky is all about the political good old boy network, and he most certainly is not a part of it.  

I'll be shocked if the Ark Park survives far past his term.  I'm not sure how true reports of light attendance are, but it's an attraction with a limited target audience and a somewhat remote location.  Once the sheen of being new wears off, I think they'll have problems.  It can't be cheap to maintain something like that.

(10-02-2016, 07:09 AM)treee Wrote: No one is arguing with you that you can go too far in the other direction too. You were right in your earlier post that it takes healthy amounts of moderation to avoid fiscal disaster. That said, I think policies focused on increasing the GDP would be a healthier attitude for a government than just cutting expenses.