Brownback and the Kansas Republicans have been buying votes. That is what this amounts to. He stayed in office at the expense of the budget and now it has to be paid back and the Kansas Republicans don't want to admit they have been deceiving the people about the truth of the issues facing the state.
May 20, 2017
By Jonathan Shorman
...House Majority Leader Don Hineman, R-Dighton, (click here) would not comment after the failed vote....
...In the Senate, Democrats joined with moderate Republicans and some members of Senate Republican leadership to move the bill across the line, but the vote total was short of the 27 votes that would have been needed to override a veto by Brownback.
"We need to get Kansas back on a somewhat structurally balanced budget," said Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, R-Overland Park.
Denning said the bill could make the state budget "semi-stable."
"At the end of the day, we’ve got to start some place. It’s the 102nd day of the session, people (are) wondering what the heck is going on," said Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City.
The bill the Senate passed Tuesday would have raised more than $1.2 billion over the next two fiscal years by ending Brownback’s tax exemption for roughly 330,000 business owners and boosting income tax rates.
It would have restored a third income tax bracket eliminated in Brownback’s 2012 tax cuts.
Tax rates would have begun to increase this year. The rates would have been phased in, rising first to 2.9 percent, 4.9 percent and 5.2 percent.
By tax year 2018, the tax rates would have risen to and remained at 3.1 percent for the lowest bracket, 5.25 percent for the middle rate and 5.7 for the highest rate.
The Sales Tax and Revenue Bond Financing Act, referred to as STAR bonds, would also have been extended under the proposal.
Kansas faces a budget shortfall of roughly $900 million over two years. That does not include any additional education spending that lawmakers may approve as part of a new school funding formula....
