Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback to cut $45 million in public-school funding

[TomCADem]

Source: MSNBC

Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s aggressive tax cuts have come back to haunt him. In the latest move to make up for a massive state deficit caused by his economic policy, Brownback plans to cut nearly $45 million in funding for public schools and higher education in his state by March.

Brownback shared his plans for the current budget cycle on Thursday ahead of a Senate vote on a bill aimed at eradicating a $344 million deficit projected for the end of June. More than half of the money would be taken from funding for K-12 schools, and take place as soon as March 7, The Associated Press reported. The cut would also affect Kansas colleges and universities. Top Republicans said lawmakers need to agree on a solution to fix the budget by Feb. 13 to make sure the state pays its bills on time through the summer months.

Brownback spent his first term slashing taxes for the rich, promising it would lead to boom times for everyone else. Brownback’s “real live experiment” was supposed to lift Kansas out of the recession and into economic prosperity. The tax breaks instead led to debt downgrades, weak growth, and left the state finances in shambles. The Republican-led legislature in his state previously celebrated his massive tax cuts, but his action landed the state’s budget in shambles when it didn’t boost the economy like he’d hoped.

* * *
The governor, along with the state legislature, cut budgets for schools so much in the past that the Kansas Supreme Court last year declared school funding levels unconstitutional.


Read more: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/kansas-gov-sam-brownback-cut-45-million-public-school-funding

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Welcome to Kansas, the right wing, supply side utopia.

[DonCoquixote]

1. this is no accident

This is meant to give the rich exactly what they wanted, period.

[Adrahil]

18. And to destroy public services, including education.

I really feel for our brothers and sisters behind the lines there. And frankly, I think here in Indiana, we're not much better off with that sociopath Pence in the Governor's mansion.

[Enrique]

21. exactly

this article says the tax cuts have "come back to haunt him". But he just got re-elected. What does he care about cuts to education?

[elleng]

2. Question of the 'decade:'

WILL Americans (Kansans, Badgers, Missourians, etc etc etc) RECOGNIZE the damage repug governors rain down upon them, and save themselves (and us???)

[exboyfil]

8. Throw those from Louisiana and New Jerseyin the bunch as well

Any state with a GOP governor with presidential aspirations is at risk. Jindal especially has even ticked off his own republican base in Louisiana (see recent article by a conservative magazine). Conservative is the wrong word for these people. At least conservatives in the past had some understanding of the budget process and how you are supposed to pay for the things the state is supposed to supply.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

13. Conservatives have long embraced crackpot economic theories

Mainstream economists reject the Austrian school, in large part because the Austrians disdain model making (but do it anyway, just very badly). For those of you who speak economics, there is an interesting article, "Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist" at http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/whyaust.htm

Ron Paul has called for a return to the gold standard. The major effect of returning to the gold standard would be to limit the money supply. The total amount of gold that has ever been mined has been estimated at around 142 thousand metric tons. Assuming a gold price of $1000 per ounce, the total value of all the gold ever mined would be around $4.5 trillion. This is less than the value of all the money in the US, where more than $8 trillion is in circulation or on deposit. So returning to the gold standard would cause such a massive contraction of the money supply as to make the depths of the Great Depression look like the Good Old Days.

Gretchen Carlson of Fox News claimed "47 percent of Americans don't pay any taxes". John McCain and Sarah Palin both said similar things during the 2008 campaign about the bottom half of Americans. Ari Fleischer, the former Bush White House spokesman, once said, "50 percent of the country gets benefits without paying for them". Actually, they pay lots of taxes, just not lots of federal income taxes.

Data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy show that in 2008 the average income for the bottom third of taxpayers was $15,300. This year the first $9,350 of income is exempt from taxes for singles and $18,700 for married couples. That means millions of the poor do not make enough to owe income taxes. But they still pay plenty of other taxes, including federal payroll taxes. Between gas taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes and other taxes, no one lives tax free in America.

When it comes to state and local taxes, the poor bear a heavier burden than the rich in every state except Vermont, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy calculated from official data. In Alabama, for example, the burden on the poor is more than twice that of the top 1%. The one-fifth of Alabama families making less than $13,000 pay almost 11% of their income in state and local taxes, compared with less than 4% for those who make $229,000 or more.

Rand Paul said that "the wealthy do pay most of the taxes in this country". The Internet is awash with statements that the top 1% pay more than 40%. It's true that the top 1% of wage earners paid 38% of federal income taxes in 2008 (the most recent year for which data are available). But people forget that income tax is less than half of federal taxes and only one-fifth of taxes at all levels of government. Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes (known as payroll taxes) are paid mostly by the bottom 90% of wage earners. That's because once you reach $106,800 of income, you pay no more for Social Security, though the much smaller Medicare tax applies to all wages. Warren Buffett pays the same amount of Social Security taxes as someone who earns $106,800.

The IRS issues an annual report on the 400 highest income tax payers. In 1961, there were 398 taxpayers who made $1 million or more, so I compared their income tax burdens from that year to 2008. Despite skyrocketing incomes, the federal tax burden on the richest 400 has been slashed, thanks to a variety of loopholes, allowable deductions and other tools. The actual share of their income paid in taxes, according to the IRS, is 16.6%. Adding payroll taxes barely nudges that number. Compare that to the vast majority of Americans, whose share of their income going to federal taxes increased from 13.1% in 1961 to 22.5% in 2008.

Unlike many conservatives, I have actually read Arthur Laffer's paper introducing the "Laffer Curve". The curve suggests that, as taxes increase from low levels, tax revenue collected by the government also increases. Laffer also says that tax rates increasing after a certain point would cause people not to work as hard or not at all, thereby reducing tax revenue. Eventually, if tax rates reached 100% (the far side of the curve), then all people would choose not to work because everything they earned would go to the government. Thus, there is an argument to be made saying that UP TO A POINT, decreasing taxes will make government income go up. Conservatives ignore the "up to a point", and claim that decreasing taxes will always make government income go up. As Brownback has shown, this doesn't work. To quote H L Mencken, "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong".

Conservatives buy into "trickle down economics". The best comment on that was from the Pope, in his Evangelii Gaudium "The promise was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefitting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger, nothing ever comes out for the poor."

He also wrote,

Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacra­lised workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.

As John Stuart Mill accurately said, "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives". I agree with the late Phillip K Dick, who wrote, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".

[elleng]

22. Yes, I've complained about use of the term 'conservative'

for these radicals for a long time. 'holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation'

[wolfie001]

33. We (not me) just elected a Rightie here in "Blue Maryland"

As each day passes, he turns a bit more into Mr. Hyde. He's scrambling to keep his campaign promises to "cut, cut, cut".

[BlueJazz]

3. "Oh Toto!....I'll just click my heels and we'll be back in Kansas!"

Toto: "Ah...nothing personal but I'm staying here in La-La land"

[Brigid]

4. Sounds like Brownback won't be satisfied until . . .

The public schools are reduced to one-room schoolhouses with benches and slates.

[SoapBox]

5. Sooooo...where are all the jobs that those filthy rich "Job Creators" should

be pouring into Kansas...since they are even more wealthy from the tax cuts?

Oh...FUCKING NADA!!!

Idiots that voted him in are getting paid back, with a broken and destroyed state.

[lastlib]

6. The "payback" was always the intention.

"An insightful and informed citizenry is the archenemy of tyranny." (Jefferson) The last thing the GOP wants is that insightful and informed (and educated) citizenry to oppose the tyranny they have in mind. That is why they are taking bludgeons to public education and trying to privatize it so the privateers can loot it for the profits and dump the carcass onto the taxpayers. I may be wrong, but I firmly believe that that is their intention. Uneducated peons make for better, more docile slaves, dependent on the corporate masters for survival, and thus less likely to upset the existing order. Makes for more profit for those masters.

[guillaumeb]

27. you hit that one out of the park!

Here in Illinois, newly inaugurated GOP Governor Bruce "I'm not a billionaire yet" Rauner ran on the same platform that Brownback did in 2010 and 2014. Cut taxes and regulations and all will be well. He was going to cut income taxes and property taxes and by the miracle of supply side economics the state would prosper. Supply side has never worked but reality does not apply to the Republican voters.

Our flat state income tax was cut recently. Average Illinois taxpayer will pay $500 less in state income taxes. Rauner, with 63 million in declared income in 2013, will get an estimated $750,000 tax cut. Maybe Rauner will buy enough Carhart jackets and Timex watches to stimulate the economy.

When Jonathan Gruber talked about "the stupidity of the average American voter" he was attacked by the media. If he had substituted the word ignorance for stupidity he would have been correct. Millions of voters supported progressive positions on raising the minimum wage, marriage equality, progressive taxation and a host of other Democratic ideas, but these same voters voted for Republicans who will never support these same positions.

Plus turnout in 2014 was so low that the befuddled senior Tea Party clowns who are the Republican base played a bigger part.
(From a 64 year old union member living in Illinois)

[DMay]

7. Ya dont say!

Get what ya vote for eh? They asked for it, they got it !

[blkmusclmachine]

14. Or maybe they had their votes tampered with...See below.

[greymattermom]

9. It will be obvious soon

In Kansas City, border wars are a way of life. The Kansas City, MO school district has been poor for years, so folks just moved a few blocks west into Johnson County. Businesses play off the two states by moving back and forth every few years to get a better deal. When you see new houses built on the Missouri side near State Line, Rd, it will be over for Kansas. The universities in Kansas have been cut for years, and faculty are not in town much because they need to make up the lack of any pay raise for 10 years by doing outside work. People who can are leaving, many for Denver. I can't figure out what the ultimate goal is, except to empty the state.

[blkmusclmachine]

10. No "accidents" w/Brownback. This was deliberate sabotage, a malicious form of far rightwing

"Christianity" called Christian reconstructionism/Christian dominionism, of which Brownback has been identified as a member by Jeff Sharlet in his 2008 expose' The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power http://www.amazon.com/Family-Secret-Fundamentalism-Heart-American/dp/0060560053/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1423306941&sr=8-2&keywords=the+family+secret+american

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

11. That's who the voters wanted in office. That's who they got.

[blkmusclmachine]

12. The Corporations who own the secret black box vote "counting" machines wanted Brownback. Since we

are forbidden from verifying the results, we cannot know how the general public really voted. We're told to trust the Corporations and their secret black boxes with unknown software and move along, and I'm not comfortable with that. Not at all...

[Deadbeat Republicans]

20. I Voted Stickers are audited.

[olegramps]

15. Well, well. Elections have consequencs.

The red state voters get exactly what they voted for. Nothing.

[turbinetree]

16. Kansas a new AUSTERITY

Your state is being run by a right wing libertarian smuck and a right wing libertarian legislature full of smucks are going to have to raise tuition fees to balance your budget in the future, and your children of that future will have to deal with your mess of blindside politics of stupidity and allegiance , your property taxes are and will be the highest in the future after you determine to elect someone that will have to correct your path of AYN RAND concept of the have and the have not's will have to defend yourself from greed, right along with the other states that are being run into the ground with governors that have no business holding a elected office, because of the simple fact they believe in the Singapore model of Authoritarian Capitalists:
"Authoritarian capitalism is a government system that combines a capitalist economic system with some form of authoritarian or despotic political regime"----- ie: the Koch Industries, National Right to Work for Less Committee and what ever industrial base you don't have, there is only so much gain in wheat, and telephone poles and you can only bleed some much from the hard earned pension programs.
And if you don't think your little band of right wing hypocrites are not like the Singapore model of government you forget they are a right wing republican and libertarian AYN RAND followers who are beholden to there corporate masters, and getting there cover from the right wing majority from U.S. Supreme Court under the financial Citizen United ruling, which is place.
And your AUSTERITY program is Brownback's ultimate payback of hypocrisy of deceit and deception being placed on your children's back and there future and his form of fascist democracy: "a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control"---and again coupled to Authoritarian Capitalists, with a DEBT of 39 BILLION DOLLARS, not profit but DEBT under Brownback and your legislature----nice job.
You keep voting these people in and your bed is now made-----what are you going to do about this situation

[tanyev]

17. So ironic that they are desperate to protect zygotes and fetuses

when they can't stand the little moochers after they arrive.

[fredamae]

19. When "they" have nothing left

to Steal from the Peoples Collective Tax Dollar Investments...investments that are Intended to fund Schools and Many other Social Services Programs btw.....
Then what will their excuses be after they've "awarded" all of our money to wall street/kochs et al?
At some point...even brownbacks fans will demand to know what the hell is going on.....
What happens after all the money is gone to the top ".01%".

[freebrew]

23. Because Kansans aren't stupid enough? NT

[They_Live]

24. asshole.

[BlueStater]

25. Kansas residents had an opportunity to get rid of this asshole in November.

Too many of them apparently decided they enjoy being fucked over.

[Thinkingabout]

26. Brownback is working the Bush mold, cut taxes and run up the deficit and then they have to

Cut because they cut revenues before making the necessary cuts in the budget. Yep, we need more financial idiots like this running our country. They should cut the salaries and expenses of the governor and then cut the salaries and expenses of the legislature just to show how very easy it I to run government on a $0 budget.

[JoePhilly]

29. They destroy the economy, then gut social programs.

[Rhinodawg]

28. Who the hell voted for this idiot.

Except for KS-DUers, what a waste.

[KingCharlemagne]

31. My Dad lives in Lawrence but does not have internet access (thus not a DUer. He adamantly

insists he hates computers My Dad says Kansas is run by an oligarchy (in the way Plato used the term in his Republic), the Governor being its front man. He says the people decided they like having an oligarchy running things.

I put that out there for people to consider and comment upon, not having the means to verify it myself.

[Vic Tree]

30. More like Sam Dumb Hack

How the HELL did this guy get re-elected?

[Cha]

32. Wondering how much it will affect the kids and if their parents will start complaining from

the ground level? Enough to regret their vote for him?

I do really feel bad for those who voted for the other guy.

[kyburbonkid]

34. When people vote for republicans this is what they get.

This is not libertarian this, tea party that... Let put the blame where the blame is deserved. This is a republican problem and it should be rammed down their throats of KS voters if you vote for an asshole, this is what you get. The worst part is, this is so typical of the moran republican party solutions to guberment that they would likely pass a law giving tax breaks to horse shit farmers!

I have lots of relatives in KS and they fit the mold, but one Uncle was as liberal as they came. He was just out numbered buy the dip sticks.

[TomCADem]

35. But if you watch Fox News...

...as many folks in Kansas might, then you would know that the cause probably relates to Bengazi, the ACA, or the spread of Sharia law. It is a great luxury when you have a 24/7 propaganda channel that is working hard to justify or cover-up for hand outs to the rich.