Kansas slashes revenue forecast, adjusts budget to avert gap

[jpak]

Source: Charlotte Observer

TOPEKA, KAN. Kansas slashed its revenue projections on Friday, and Republican Gov. Sam Brownback's budget director immediately announced $124 million in budget adjustments to allow the state to keep paying its bills on time.

University economists, legislative researchers and officials in Brownback's administration issued a new, more pessimistic fiscal forecast for state government after months of disappointing tax collections. The new numbers recognize recent economic slumps in agriculture and energy production and what state officials have said is a national softness in recent months in consumer spending.

The state has struggled to balance its budget since GOP legislators cut personal income taxes dramatically in 2012 and 2013 at Brownback's urging, in an effort to stimulate the economy. Most of those income tax cuts have been preserved, but Republican lawmakers raised sales and cigarette taxes in July.

The new fiscal forecast projects the state will collect $354 million less in revenue from now through June 2017 than the old forecast had predicted. The state's current budget is based on the older numbers, so the new ones immediately created a projected deficit.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/national-business/article43415940.html#storylink=cpy

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/national-business/article43415940.html

[daleanime]

1. The question is....

will Kansas triple down on Brownback's budget nightmare.

[n2doc]

11. Yeah! more income tax cuts and sales tax increases!

THe repubs plan is to take over all states and make everyone equally miserable. Kentucky, you are up next!

[BlueJazz]

2. It's amusing and strange that just about any poster on this site could run the state of Kansas....

...better than those Republican clowns can run it...

[Fred Sanders]

3. Government drowning in a bath tub? Mission accomplished almost in Kansas!

I guess Kansas voters are in favor of being their government and government services being drowned?!

Let Kansas be a lesson for the entire country to learn from before voting in a federal election.

[Plucketeer]

6. Let this be a lesson indeed!

Of course, I really don't have much confidence in the power of comprehension held by a large portion of our populace. And even if they WERE able to make the correlation between Tea Party ideals and the mess they can spawn, the media they're tuned to is not gonna inspire them to put 2 & 2 together. With the gerrymandered congress and their personal news channel to hide the truth, ANY Dem president is gonna be facing one hell of a climb to make substantive progress.
Time for a whopper of a tornado to come thru. I'm bettin' there's a BUNCH of folks who wish they weren't in Kansas anymore!

[Fred Sanders]

8. What if a leftist government took total control of Kansas and turned it into what Kansas is now?

The corporate media would be all over it as a lesson never, ever to be repeated and certainly not at the federal level!

But when the clearly and obviously and irrefutably corporated controlled puppet lackey GOP rightists in total control of Kansas do the same......silence.....fucking silence.....I hate the fucking silence of the corporate media more than the fucking noise!

The fucking "liberal media" is kicking our fact-loving and issue-debating liberal butts with distracting entertainment we seem incapable of responding to effectively, probably in no small part because the fucking "liberal media" is too busy covering their own fake liberal butts for always covering the extremist butts of the GOP clown car riders.

Maybe it is all so insane and the insanity is never called insanity because most of the folks, at least at this time of the endless election campaign, the folks just seem to be want only to be entertained, not informed.....the jaw-dropping stupid and hate of the front-seat passengers in the GOP clown car are entertaining, no denying that, so the more stupid and hateful, the more entertaining they are!

How does one go about making an appeal from liberals as entertaining as the appeal of the fascists when the media is controlled mainly by the latter?

But when push comes to shove and polling turns to voting, I still have faith that all the lying will not win.

[Plucketeer]

9. Of course, I agree with all you say

The fourth estate states nothing that it's owners don't want aired. Look at the TPP.

Isn't it amusing to realize that Romney would look downright presidential against any of the Clown Car passengers that look like they might be the nominee!

We're down to FOUR "debates" for our side, and I'd be willing to bet that one of the three is wishing there weren't any more left at all! It might be fun to have at least one of them say: Look what's happened to Kansas! But they probably won't for worry of alienating someone.

[Fred Sanders]

18. I think all of the Democratic Party candidates are more or less fine with the schedule they have

known in advance for over a year, is it?

Being one of three major candidates left for one of two slots for folks to pick the leader of the free world is not too shabby!

If any of the candidates thought in advance that one debate would seal the deal in November and so wish there were no more debates after one is over has not been doing very good planning and strategy.

There is still a long way to go, literally anything can happen, it is after all a game of chance at this stage, and as long as you are still in the game for a very narrow field of potential winners, I would counsel all the candidates to stop the whining, stop the internal boxing and get on with forcing the corporste media to report in the issues, and report on the insanity of the enemy camp for a change and for the sake of sanity.

[tblue37]

24. O'Malley and Sanders (*especially O'Malley) have complained and called for more debates. nt

[UpInArms]

22. my husband and i own a small print only newspaper

And i had a rightwinger come in and practically demand i dumb down the paper, saying i should not put anything of substance in it and write all articles to the fifth grade level.

I tossed her ass out of the office, after telling her she had stupid ideas.

[-none]

14. Don't blame the Kansas voters.

There were some election irregularities that they have managed to keep from being investigated. The polls showed show Brownback losing in a close race. It was kind of surprising he did "win" actually.

[Fred Sanders]

19. There was a scientifically provable mathematical discrepancy in the number of votes cast in

certain regions and the number of votes counted, as well as major voting pattern irregularities.

I think it may even be going to federal court for ruling.....I hope Obama gets a chance to appoint some more federal Judges, but the Republicans are continung to block that also...another thing unreported by the corporated media.

[-none]

21. Correct, that is what I was alluding to.

[tabasco]

4. Are the roads still paved in Kansas?

I'd worry going across a bridge in that state.

[Vincardog]

5. Don't worry there are not many bridges in Kansas.

[tabasco]

10. Au contraire

More than 25,000.

http://cjonline.com/news/2013-09-15/future-bleak-aging-county-bridges-kansas

[wolfie001]

7. Looks like the recovery from GWB's disastrous tenure......

.....has completely passed Kansas by....or bye bye Kansas!!! Thanks a bunch Brownstain (religiously-centered sociopath, remember Carrie's mother?)

[leftyladyfrommo]

12. The Kansas City Star is all over the Kansas story.

There are anti Brownback editorials all the time. They have articles on the huge budget mess all the time.

If people out there still vote for that yahoo it's their own fault that everything is getting cut back. They keep robbing Peter to pay Paul. Now they are taking money from the Transportation Dept. Pretty soon there won't be a single road that's fit to drive on. Maybe then people will start paying attention.

People used to move to Johnson County for the great schools. No more.

Now people are moving to Platte and Clay county, Missouri instead. Those counties have a lot of high income housing available and great schools.

Kansas is just going to get left behind.

[greymattermom]

17. It's so easy to move across the state line

Folks in western Kansas don't realize what will happen to Johnson county. It's happening already. The northern half is being abandoned, and there's nothing but megamansions south of 135th st. Those people will move the minute the schools start to decline.

[leftyladyfrommo]

23. I can't belive the size of all the houses out there.

I drove out along 119th and the houses are huge and it's just 0ne subdivision after another.

Those people aren't going to put up with the new Kansas. They will just move to Platte County. Platte and Clay have some really nice housing now and they are building more.

Brownback is just a disaster for Kansas but those people vote Republican no matter what. I think Johnson County is about 80% Republican.

[Downwinder]

13. Look at it this way. Kansas is living on Social Security

$ 71,693,353,000 per month.

https://ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/oasdi_zip/2014/index.html

[riversedge]

15. WI is on its way to be Kansas.

[Fred Sanders]

20. How else can you create a Godly nation without cleansing the land of the vermin there before?

Isn't that what the "deep-red" states controlled entirely by evangelicals are doing....preparing the land?

That is just a theory...of course there would have to be a lot of evidence to support such a way out theory.

[marble falls]

16. Even more Kansas Miracle. Yipee. And Kansas will re-elect these cretins again and again.