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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKansas Republicans Finally Consider Changing Course On Their ‘Tea Party Experiment’
LINKRepublicans in Kansas, facing a $400 million budget hole due to tax cuts pushed by Gov. Sam Brownback, are now finally considering raising taxes to compensate for the shortfall.
Legislators are considering rolling back an exemption on nonwage income for small businesses they passed a few years ago and replacing it with a 1 percent tax credit. The reductions in rates on income taxes they passed will remain untouched. Some Republicans are also considering raising the sales tax on everything but food, though sales taxes increases are generally considered to impact the poor the most.
But its debatable if the revenue streams they are considering will even work. One bill they have on the table would only raise an estimated $30 million in revenue, falling far short of what the state needs.
Are Republicans really too stupid to realize that their repeatedly failed policies simply don't work?
libdem4life
(13,877 posts)edhopper
(33,168 posts)to the Republican Party, than lowering taxes on the wealthy. Nothing.
NRaleighLiberal
(59,940 posts)ZX86
(1,428 posts)You just have the close your eyes really, really tight and wish really, really, hard.
Binkie The Clown
(7,911 posts)click the heels of your ruby slippers while you wish real hard for your fantasy to come true.
irisblue
(32,828 posts)rickford66
(5,498 posts)gratuitous
(82,849 posts)Yeah, the solutions sound like they're going to squeeze a few more rocks trying to get blood (raising the sales tax), and maybe get a little money out of small businesses (happy you voted these martinets into office now, are you small business people?), but a wealth surcharge is out of the question (Willie Sutton's good advice notwithstanding).
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)When the boat is leaking, their response is to drill more holes in the bottom to let the water out.
central scrutinizer
(11,616 posts)Is to throw out those who are rowing - working people - and blame them for everything
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)MuseRider
(34,057 posts)This will not work either and what will we do? What can we do? Well, we have begun selling things off to the private sector. Medicaid is now KanCare and it is not working, not serving the people that need help. It is not responsive to their requests or responsive to those they are supposed to pay. Patients are getting screwed, hospitals are getting screwed and doctors are getting screwed BUT it is not the governments mess any longer, just the 3 companies they contracted with to do the work. BECAUSE, say it with me, government doesn't work. The fact that the private companies that get the tax money to run the show now are not working is not the governments problem. The government may have been responsible for changing this but the lack of care and the robbing of the money is not their fault now is it?
I am certain that David Koch (I think he is the Koch that still lives here) has been sitting in the halls of our government making certain things go as South as they can and spinning spinning and spinning it. The teabaggers and the conservative R's are fighting. The couple of moderate R's who survived Sam's death squads are caught and holding with the Dems at the moment.
I can tell you this, y'all better be paying very close attention and use this. We are getting killed here, we will not be able to recover for a very long time. Please use this to keep this from spreading. This is the moment when they finally got everything they wanted and look how it turned out. Don't lose this lesson, it really sucks to live through it.
calimary
(80,693 posts)Let's turn their losses into OUR gains.
"This is the moment when they finally got everything they wanted and look how it turned out."
You have a real uphill battle though, as do the rest of us. Because those who are wrong here are also loathe to admit it. They don't DARE admit their big ideas aren't even worth a pile of elephant shit. One simply cannot do that! Because they're STILL thinking if they just do it "right" next time, it'll work the way they assured us all that it would. The same way the asshole idiots on Iraq are saying it woulda worked if we'd just stayed in, and kept feeding our precious children into that endless, perpetual meat-grinder over there. We just left the job unfinished, that's all. It didn't go far enough, that's all. Or as the grand fundamental weasel-excuse of that whole cockamamie side of the aisle is nowadays: "it's NOT that our ideas/policies/candidates suck! They just weren't CONservative ENOUGH!!!"
MuseRider
(34,057 posts)that the Koch brothers live here. One with the business mostly and the other lives here and runs those businesses from Kansas. These freaks started working on this state many years ago. They learned here. I became aware of them in the 80's, god knows how long they had been quietly messing with things before that. A slow job but they learned their lessons here then began to spread out. Wanna know what is really wrong with Kansas? One mega buck family with a huge corporate influence slowly infiltrating thought and manner in a small area where most of the state sees and hears little outside of what they were telling them. They got that group, figured out what works, and moved from there. Everyone wants to call this state stupid, well yes we are and this is why. If you don't like what is happening where you are then don't spend any amount of energy calling the test group stupid, they never saw what was coming, you know what it is. Stop it. LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED, you get to see the how and why and the results. Many people here were nursed at the breast of this family. There was no other voice and why is that? Where were the other voices to counter them? Oh yes, in your more important states. We could have used some support here, ya know? We were not always like this. Sebelius was elected because she was very conservative for the most part and she was running against a freak show that would be considered mainstream now. We were already almost gone then.
I know every state is getting some of this and some a lot of this but the Koch brothers do not sit in the rooms and meet with your legislators before each big vote. There is not a brother sitting in the room watching the votes. ALEC may be everywhere but Charles Koch is meeting personally here. It is almost impossible to see a way out at this point.
Do not let your states get Brownbacked.
***It is Charles that lives here, after all this I still get them mixed up.