How Tea Party tax cuts are turning Kansas into a smoking ruin

Kansas Gov. Brownback's Budget Hits Cherished Highway System
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| By JOHN HANNA
Posted: 02/07/2015 1:04 pm EST Updated: 02/07/2015 7:59 pm EST

"TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas voters who re-elected a Republican governor known for aggressive tax cutting are learning that the state won't solve its serious budget problems without putting a normally sacrosanct asset in the crosshairs — its state-of-the-art highway system."

"Gov. Sam Brownback and the GOP-dominated Legislature this past week worked out plans for closing a $344 million deficit and allowing the state to pay its bills on time into the summer. The plans included cuts to predictable targets, such as education spending and public pension contributions, but also diverted money from highway projects, which are especially prized by the governor's rural supporters.

"The extent of the cutbacks brought home the impact of the income tax reductions that Brownback, an outspoken fiscal conservative, has pushed through since taking office in 2011.

"Even a few of the Legislature's most austerity minded members were taken aback by the blow to the highway program, which comes as other states are considering new ways of ramping up infrastructure investment — some by raising taxes.

"When I send out surveys and say, 'What are the roles of government?' — and this is not just my district — roads are generally at the top of the list," said Sen. Forrest Knox, a southeast Kansas Republican who's among the Legislature's most conservative members.

"Many of Brownback's allies have supported the cuts he's made to cover the revenue lost from his tax measures, which dropped the top rate for individuals by 29 percent and exempted 191,000 business owners altogether. Brownback has argued that lower taxes would attract more businesses to Kansas and benefit the economy.

"But revenues have fallen short of expectations, and Kansas' credit ratings were downgraded last year.

"Brownback this week proposed cutting spending on public schools..."

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Welcome to Kansas - Home of the Stupid

Kansas weighs tax hikes as options for fixing budget
http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article10158593.html

Kansas lawmakers are busily working behind the scenes on options for raising taxes if they run into trouble filling a $600 million hole in the state budget.

House leaders are crafting a smorgasbord of proposals calling for a sales tax increase, a gas tax increase, a tax on wind and solar energy production, a tax on electronic cigarettes and a tax on “passive income,” which could include earnings from rent or royalties paid for oil and gas exploration. They are also looking at imposing a surcharge on income taxes.

In some cases, those taxes – such as a gas tax or sales tax increase – might be short-term solutions to the state’s budget problems and eventually lapse, legislators said.

Legislative leaders characterized the proposals as a fallback option in the event the Legislature hits a snag balancing the budget, which was left with a massive hole following income tax cuts passed in previous years at the urging of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.

(More at above url)

Welcome to Kansas.... we are going to add a tax to your income tax.

... and North Carolina is trying to imitate these idiots.
 
gwb-trading said:
Welcome to Kansas - Home of the Stupid

Kansas weighs tax hikes as options for fixing budget
http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article10158593.html

Kansas lawmakers are busily working behind the scenes on options for raising taxes if they run into trouble filling a $600 million hole in the state budget.

House leaders are crafting a smorgasbord of proposals calling for a sales tax increase, a gas tax increase, a tax on wind and solar energy production, a tax on electronic cigarettes and a tax on “passive income,” which could include earnings from rent or royalties paid for oil and gas exploration. They are also looking at imposing a surcharge on income taxes.

In some cases, those taxes – such as a gas tax or sales tax increase – might be short-term solutions to the state’s budget problems and eventually lapse, legislators said.

Legislative leaders characterized the proposals as a fallback option in the event the Legislature hits a snag balancing the budget, which was left with a massive hole following income tax cuts passed in previous years at the urging of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.

(More at above url)

Welcome to Kansas.... we are going to add a tax to your income tax.

... and North Carolina is trying to imitate these idiots.
More...

Too bad politicians can't cut spending...
 
Scataphagos said:
Too bad politicians can't cut spending...
More...

Sometimes a crowd comes into office shouting "Starve the beast" and then proceeds to cut education and every other service that reasonable people expect government to provide. The elected tea party legislators then discover that there are limits to cutting basic functions of government. Of course, by this point they have also passed tax cuts based on mystical math which magically claims that cutting taxes will increase tax revenue because the state economy will be stimulated by all the businesses and individuals fleeing the state.

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The people of this country know when they're over taxed and being fleeced by the public sector, and it's not surprising that it galls the people that are the recipients of the largesse.

I applaud any state legislators that will stand up to the phony tales of underfunding by those who are raping the taxpayer, and my only hope is that they'll not be cowed into changing their minds under the constant pressure they receive from the special interests.

The tales of woe from those in the public sector who are forced to live under the same kind of budget that most every family in America has to live under is enough to make a sane person want to puke. Is there anyone who doesn't know that every cent budgeted in the public sector is spent, whether needed or not, so the budget for the following year won't be cut? Is there anyone too dumb to see that anytime a cut to the public sector is contemplated, the response from that public sector to the proposed cut is to cut a service that will try to hurt the public as much as possible? Who can forget the gov't shutdown when the public parks were blockaded off so people couldn't walk past a war memorial while at the same time Obama is going on multi million dollar trips. Or, since it's tax season, how can we not mention that the IRS is not even sending out tax forms as usual, supposedly because they are so strapped for money, but all the while they can't even get rid of tax cheats who work for the IRS. The universal response to proposed cuts is to try to make it as painful as possible to the public while never cutting anything of significance to the public sector workers themselves.

And I have at least as much disdain for the projections that are pulled out of someone's rear end that supposedly prove whatever the special interest needs to prove to extract massive amounts of money out of taxpayers. Take those wasteful investments in movies, for example. The commerce dept's of states use bullsht projections handed to them from the movie industry to get public funding, and hope that their state never actually see what the real return is on the so called investment. Because the states that have done audits have discovered that the projections of returns to the states on the movie deals not only didn't make the type of returns they projected, they lost vast amounts of money for the states. I suspect that one of the reasons that the movie industry attempts to fleece the public through the gov't is that movie industry limited partnerships sold through broker dealers have had such poor returns that they can no longer fool unsuspecting investors.

Or how about the recent projections of revenue losses to North Carolina from the tax rate reductions and broadening of the tax code? From the screaming and yelling, you'd almost think the state was losing real money and was almost destitute. But then you realize that these were only projections, not real money, and nobody in the public sector has been fired yet. Not that many of us wouldn't like for a very large part of them to get fired and go find a real job.
How about we just see what the real revenue is when it comes in, compare it to other states so as to adjust for national and regional economic influences, and evaluate it from there? But no, the left and the rhinos would rather evaluate revenue based on projections. And then they get the growth rate data from Moody's Analytics, who's chief economist is the go to guy for journalists who want intellectual support for big gov't.

Another amusing anecdote is from teachers who insist that if they no longer had to teach classes because the teaching was centralized over computers, that there would be a need for more teachers. Relieve teachers of a large part of their responsibility and you need more of them. How mind numbingly dumb would the public have to be to fall for that? Just how much utter contempt for the public that pays the bills does the teachers union have to even suggest such an absurd thing?

The constant whining about the need for more and more money and a greater role for the public sector is worn out. The shifting of the tax code to exempt half the people in the country from paying taxes is evidence of that. It's easy to get votes from Paul when you're robbing Peter to pay Paul. Could they get all those votes if the voters had to pay the taxes themselves?

Gov'ts at every level are massive depositories of waste of taxpayer money and the need to resort to deceit like they used in obamacare to get bills passed is prima facie evidence of that. The truth doesn't sell.

Migration data showing people fleeing from high tax states to low tax states comes from historical records of the IRS itself. People voting with their feet is better evidence of the success or failure of any initiative than some wild eyed, bs projection conjured up and well paid for to prove somebody's point that more gov't is needed.

The country grew to be the largest and strongest in the world with much smaller gov'ts at every level and now we're told that the country will collapse unless the gov't gets more funding.

I have no hope whatsoever that it's going to change because where has it ever changed? Gov'ts increase until the tax base supporting it crumbles beneath the weight and that's the way it's always happened and that's the way it's always going to happen. And no matter how exceptional America is, it's no exception to this rule. Gov't investment generates less return than private investment, and when gov't begins taking over more and more of the investment function of capital within a country, how can the country's growth rate not suffer? Politicians making investment decisions with other people's money? What a joke.

First they try and tax the money away from the citizens to fund their largesse and redistribution schemes, then they move on to borrowing the money, then when that spigot runs out they're left with no choice but financial repression via zero interest rates and monetization of the debt to keep the ball rolling. We're at the end game right now in public finances. The only way they can keep up the charade is print the money out of thin air. They couldn't fund all their pet projects any other way. How long the monetization will last is anyone's guess, but I don't know of any other steps they have left other than going full commie.

And it all hinges upon the starting point of fooling people into believing they just can't live without a bigger gov't.
 
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