Kansas financial situation continues to plummet

[JackLuis]

Lowering the tax rates on the top 10% and raising taxes on the majority ( sales taxes and use fees) sounds good to the people, but in fact hurt the economy more than they help.

Brownback is just fucking the common folk to support the 10%. If he were fiscally responsible he would have paid down the debt before he lowered the tax rates.

Face it he is just a another Rethuglican asshole.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Fiscal Irresponsibility - Obama has doubled the national debt and you're still sticking with the Tea Party dogma.

Tax revenues fluctuate with the economy. Another room temperature point on Taxes, which is why tax revenues decline in a recession. We've had 8 years of a weak economy under a "Fiscally Responsible" president...no surprise tax revenues would be weak.

"Basic Services" - A point so vague as to be useless.

Yes Obama did double the national debt (well sorta but whatever we'll call that a fact) the truth is he should have done more than that. Our economy isn't where it should have been because he and Congress decided that cutting the deficit was a priority.

Well you got one part correct. Two since basic services is vague. Really it should simply be "What the people want."

 

[JackLuis]

Rethuglican Asshole...Well...who can argue with that open-minded logic.

Well Lit is known as the epicenter of open-mindeness.

I differentiate between Republicans and Rethuglicans, although it is hard now to find a honest Republican these days, I'm sure that there are some.

 

[phrodeau]

I keep hearing that Congress controls the pursestrings. So how can Obama be responsible for the debt increase? Somebody is lying.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Thanks for correcting.

High-Tax-Rate California has even more debt?? Wow.

Not proportionally.

It's ok though keep pretending that means something as if we don't make 24x as much money as Kansas.

By the way...the 400 billion figure doesn't contemplate the pension obligations of that state. If that's included the debt ballons to almost 700 billion.....

No it doesn't you're just making shit up.

what's that do to the "Debt to GDP Ratio?"

Nothing....sorry if you want to demonize a blue state in the money making/debt issue you would have a MUCH easier time with NY than CA, you would know that if you had a clue.

We should raise taxes then...'cause that won't lead to more debt.

No it pays debt that's been incurred. Something Republicans hate doing...they don't have enough personal responsibility.

 

[JackLuis]

And I would say the same about Democrats....where does that leave us?

Probably agreeing that Politics is a dirty business made up of egotistical assholes and a few honest idealists.

 

[someoneyouknow]

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-01-20/taxpayers-call-themselves-businesses-as-kansas-tax-plan-founders


Investment adviser Brad Stratton didn’t pay Kansas any income taxes last year. He doesn’t feel good about that.

Stratton, who runs Overland Park Wealth Management LLC in Overland Park, is among hundreds of thousands of taxpayers who’ve been exempt from the state levy since 2012 because they’re considered small businesses. As a group, they’re contributing to a budget crisis Kansas can’t seem to escape.

Officials estimated 191,000 taxpayers would be eligible for the break, which the administration of Republican Governor Sam Brownback designed to spur job creation. Instead, in 2013, more than 330,000 self-employed filers -- lawyers, accountants, architects, even farmers -- took advantage of it, according to the Kansas Revenue Department.

“When people figured out they could create a business and filter their income through it and avoid paying taxes, who isn’t going to do that?” said state Representative Mark Hutton, a Republican from Wichita. "This is only going to get worse.

. . . .
But since the adoption of Brownback’s tax package, which included cutting the top income-tax rate by 26 percent and increasing standard deductions for married and single head-of-household filers, Kansas has gone from a $709 million surplus to shortfalls, said Duane Goossen, who served as budget director for both Republican and Democratic Kansas governors.

“It’s here we go again, again,” Goossen said.

. . . .
"We certainly haven’t seen the trickle-down effect to keep it rolling through the economy. It hasn’t happened," said Tracey Osborne, president of the Overland Park Chamber of Commerce.

Osborne said schools and roads have been hurt by declining revenue -- a deterrent to economic growth.

. . . .
In the meantime, though, Brad Stratton has mixed feelings at best.

“The folks I employ are all paying a state income tax, and I’m not,” he said. “That’s not equitable.” As for job growth, he said, “the tax break wasn’t enough for me to hire anyone.”

Jason Ball, president and chief executive officer of the Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber of Commerce, said it’s premature to call the tax break a mistake. Low taxes are good for business, he said. However, the law should be re-examined because it hasn’t been a boon to job creation.

 

[someoneyouknow]

Kansas unemployment 3.9%.

There are several reasons for the low unemployment rate. Kansas does not have growing industries. They are, by and large, agricultural with federal government and some technology. If you don't have a growing job base why would people relocate to your state?

Also, a survey done last year showed Kansas had the second highest rate of people moving out of the state (as measured by a survey of moving companies).

Finally, it's Kansas.

Taxes for individuals, families and businesses cut by 30%.

Another in a long line of failures claiming if you cut taxes you will miraculously increase your revenue. It hasn't worked for 30 years but some people just can't take the hint. They are vowed and determined to keep doing the same thing over and over no matter how wrong they are.

Unlike government spending which tends to happen quickly, and then dissipate, tax cuts take longer to impact the economy, but tend to be more durable...provided their permanent and not temporary.

You can forget government spending in Kansas. They went from a $700 million budget surplus to a $400 million budget deficit in two years. Brownback has been shifting funds from highway repairs, cutting school budgets and several other money maneuvers in a vain attempt to show cutting taxes will work despite the above statement. As my article above indicates, even his own party is calling him misguided and are now worried about the coming years when taxes will have to be raised.

It'll be an interesting story to watch.

Yes, it will be interesting to see when another Republican leaves office having left behind another financial mess for someone else to clean up despite the repeated claims Republicans are fiscally responsible. It sounds vaguely familiar.

 

[someoneyouknow]

Thought this thread had been commented on more recently. Anyway, a 23-person company in Kansas has left as a direct result of the failed economic policies of Governor Brownback.

Granted, as the CEO admits, 23 people isn't a big company but, as he said in an open letter, "It’s not so much that I’m moving the company to Missouri as I’m moving it away from Kansas."

He described the policies of Gov. Sam Brownback as a test case for trickle-down economics. And “nowhere has there been as dramatic a failure of government.”

When Kansas enacted the largest income-tax cut in U.S. state history in 2012, officials said it would attract people and jobs to Kansas and that economic growth would generate enough new revenue to pay for the cuts. Instead, the state is facing budget shortfalls — totals in 11 of the past 12 months have fallen short of the state’s own projections — and the economy actually shrank in three of four quarters last year. Credit downgrades loom.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-kansas-ceo-rips-into-conservative-policies-as-his-company-heads-to-missouri-2016-06-15

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

A Brief History of How Kansas Republicans Destroyed Their State

Kansas' experiment in small government created a big mess.

May 22, 2012: Over the objections of many fellow Republicans, Brownback signs a tax-cut bill predicted to gut the budget and slash school funding.

"By the end of 2015, the state had lost nearly $3 billion in revenue and was behind most other states in job growth. And when the courts challenged the constitutionality of the bare-bones budgets, Brownback and his allies launched an all-out war on the state's judges."

March 22, 2016: The Kansas Senate narrowly passes a bill that would let lawmakers impeach state judges for "discourteous conduct" and other transgressions—a measure that could be invoked if the state Supreme Court continues to challenge the Brownback experiment.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/kansas-repubicans-gop-small-governement-brownback


Representatives of five school boards in Shawnee County are asking Kansas lawmakers for a quick resolution to the school funding dispute. Patrick Woods, president of the Topeka Public Schools Board of Education, says they want lawmakers to go back to the old formula for reducing certain disparities among districts. That will cost nearly $40 million.

The entire Kansas Legislature will be back in Topeka Thursday for a special session to try and address the problem.

http://kansaspublicradio.org/kpr-ne...oards-ask-kansas-lawmakers-add-school-funding

June 02, 2016 8:29 AM

Kansas Senate Republicans spent their final day of this year's session by passing a resolution, 30-8, condemning President Obama for his administration's guidance to schools to not discriminate against transgender students, while deciding to not act to increase funding to schools despite the state Supreme Court's ruling last week that current levels are not just illegal, but unconstitutional. All Democrats voted against the measure.

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovemen..._guidance_fail_to_fund_schools?recruiter_id=2


JUNE 14, 2016


Voluminous evidence does not matter to Brownback supporters.
Hours of testimony does not matter to Brownback supporters.


The Kansas Supreme Court’s latest ruling on school funding dropped with a thud at 5 p.m. on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend


Five of the Supreme Court justices will be on the November statewide ballot, and factions in Kansas, including the political apparatus of Wichita’s uber-wealthy Charles and David Koch, are gunning for their removal.


http://www.pitch.com/news/blog/2078...s-its-job-state-conservatives-play-the-victim