A Week After Re-Electing Brownback, Kansans Find Out He Screwed Them Over Financially A Whole Lot More

by Stephen D Foster Jr 

One week after re-electing Sam Brownback as their governor, Kansans are finding out the hard way just how bad of a decision they made.
Despite the fact that Brownback destroyed Kansas financially, the people chose him over Democrat Paul Davis anyway, and now the price of their wrecklessness at the polls couldn’t be more clear.
Earlier this year, Brownback and his fellow repugicans gave a huge financial windfall of $1 billion to the wealthy in the form of massive income tax cuts that economic experts predicted would cripple the state budget. The budget deficit was estimated to be $238 million by 2016. The experts were not only correct, it turns out the situation is even worse than predicted.
Just days prior to the election, a report revealed that Kansas suffered a shortfall of $23 million, a 15 percent drop below the projected amount of revenue the state would bring in. The report was a signal of worse news to come, and now that news has arrived. And let’s just say that Kansans are probably hanging their heads in shame for rewarding the man who caused the problem in the first place.
According to the Kansas City Star, Kansas is now on track to collect $1 billion less this year and next year than previously thought. In addition, according to Talking Points Memo:

The estimates also said the state will use up $380 million in reserves and still have to cut another $280 million for fiscal year 2015 to balance the state’s current budget. In addition, in 2016, revenues are expected to be $436 million short of expenditures according to the forecast.

Translation: Governor Sam Brownback totally screwed over his constituents and they re-elected him anyway. The financial news is really bad and just keeps getting worse, but it’s too late. All voters can do regret their decision and sit back and watch the devastation unfold because of the massive tax cuts the repugican cabal gave to their wealthy overlords. That means less tax revenue for education, healthcare, infrastructure, food assistance, etc… So when Kansans begin to personally feel the effects of what “fiscally responsible” wingnuts did to their state, they have no right to complain because they had a chance to fix this mess and they chose to double down on the stupidity. In other words, they only have themselves to blame.