Budget Shortfall: Who Gets the Blame -- Part 2

Yesterday, I doled a healthy heaping of blame out to former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. Obviously, this ongoing budget trainwreck isn’t all the fault of Sebelius and the boneheads who elected her. Kansas’ revenues were $53 million short of expectations last month. For those keeping count, that’s $79.6 million short year to date. Kansas’ budget is busted.

There’s plenty of blame to go around!

Kansas’ sacred cows also get a healthy dose of the blame. Kansas has two sacred cows, K-12 public indoctrination camps schools and agriculture. In a lot of religions, beasts are sacrificed. But not in the Kansas Legislature.

These sacred cows serve as false idols to be worshipped and adored. No questions asked. They deserve all of the funding and all of the tax breaks. The end.

As everyone who hasn’t been holed up in a cabin shunning society realizes -- Kansas public schools are bottomless pits of spending. There is no amount of funding that will ever satisfy this sacred cow. Members of the Kansas Legislature could collect every cent earned or spent in Kansas and give it to the public schools and they would be rewarded with angry teachers in red shirts surrounding the capitol screaming and cussing at legislators for not offering to sell their own kidneys to fund the summer homes of school administrators.

Kansas spends too much money, and public schools get the biggest chunk of the money. Legislators have done their level best to put school spending in check, but that beast is hungry and has the undying support of the attorneys handpicked by a bunch of other attorneys to sit on the Supreme Court.

Kansas attorneys are running a real racket. They pick their friends to sit on the bench, then sue the legislature for more funding for schools while collecting a hefty sum to “represent” the schools before the judges they picked. I don’t know how this isn’t illegal.

The Supreme Court is aided and abetted by some members of the Kansas Legislature. Allow me to name names:

Rep. Alcala	Rep. Ewy	Rep. Jennings	Rep. Sawyer
Rep. Alford	Rep. Finch	Rep. Kelly	Rep. Schroeder
Rep. Ballard	Rep. Finney	Rep. Kuether	Rep. Scott
Rep. Becker	Rep. Francis	Rep. Lewis	Rep. Sloan
Rep. Bollier	Rep. Frownfelter	Rep. Lusk	Rep. Swanson
Rep. Burroughs	Rep. Gallagher	Rep. Lusker	Rep. Thompson
Rep Carlin	Rep. Helgerson	Rep. Moxley	Rep. Tietze
Rep. Carmichael	Rep. Henderson	Rep. Ousley	Rep. Trimmer
Rep. Clark	Rep. Hibbard	Rep. Fred Patton	Rep. Victors
Rep. Clayton	Rep. Highberger	Rep. Phillips	Rep. Ward
Rep. Concannon	Rep. Hill	Rep. Proehl	Rep. Whipple
Rep. Curtis	Rep. Hineman	Rep. Rooker	Rep. Wilson
Rep. Dierks	Rep. Houston	Rep. Ruiz	Rep. Winn
Rep. Doll			Rep. Wolfe Moore

It may be too early to assign blame to the aforementioned steaming pile of legislators, but whatever budget crises occur from today onward, blame them. Seriously, blame these legislators. If you’re smart, you’ll do more than that -- you’ll fire them.

These legislators allowed a completely out-of-control state Supreme Court to continue making funding decisions. I’m no legal scholar, but I did pass the 5th grade (in a public school, so take this with a grain of salt) and I seem to recall that the Legislature is supposed to control the purse strings. The Court didn’t announce exactly how much the Legislature is supposed to take from taxpayer pockets and give to the schools, but basically, the Court has said repeatedly that the current amount isn’t enough. (They also threatened to bar the school doors if the Legislature doesn’t act soon. And I for one cannot wait to see how seven unelected judges plan to close schools. They can’t send out the National Guard, they can’t order police to do it, they can’t even order students to walk out. So someone please explain to me how this magical seven plans to personally block the doors to every single public school house in the state.)

Because of this activist bench, legislators cannot make reasonable cuts to the state budget. Public schools comprise more than 50 percent of the spending pie. But that sacred cow can’t be cut. (I’ll explain more about ag’s share of the blame in a later post.)

So, Kansas Supreme Court and questionable members of the House: Please take your share of Kansas’ budget woes blame. And then pass the plate. There’s much, much more to go around.