FAFO Friday: Can't stop a Supermajority

Kansas is getting exactly what it voted for - and it's not looking pretty for the future

I’ve been saying this entire session that the Republican supermajority in the Kansas Legislature can do anything it wants - particularly Republican leadership in the House and Senate, who can control any wayward members through coercion, threats, and removal from plum positions.

That fact was borne out this week, as the Republican supermajority handily overrode every veto that came back from Governor Laura Kelly. Kansas has unquestionably concentrated the whole of the Kansas government into the hands of a few strident Republicans in leadership who believe they know better than anyone else how to manage your affairs.

I could explain all that happened this week - and the additional veto overrides to come today. But I think I’ll just let these screenshots of Rep. Paul Waggoner’s gleeful reaction say it for me - because you’ll see that he never seems to be more aroused or alive than when his party is exercising complete dominance over any person or group of people who deviate even slightly from his narrow and self-righteous view of the world.

The easiest thing in the world to be is part of the biggest crowd - and this biggest crowd in the legislature seems to relish in its ability to wrap themselves in their concept of Christian charity while looking down on poor people, make life harder for them, while in the same breath expanding tax giveaways to the state’s wealthiest people.

Yet, for all their power and all their certainty in a mandate from voters, they didn’t do the one thing they absolutely promised to voters - relief from rising property taxes.

They spent the bulk of their time making life for people without means, toying with public education, and passing laws on made up issues that aren’t really happening (I’m looking at you HB2311) but allow them to play the victim back home - something this group of powerful men and women have become really skilled at doing.

As the session comes to a close, your lawmakers will return home. (Some of them really do live in their districts, but not all 😉).

Constituents need to ask why the most the Kansas Legislature could muster on that front was less than $50 a year for a $260,000 home - while they managed to ram through income tax relief for their rich buddies and the corporations that support them. The Governor’s team estimated the annual cost to the state will be $1.3 billion. If that bears out, the state will be broke in just a few years and we’ll again experience the sort of weakening of government that allows corporations unfettered control of our systems - while our schools and infrastructure fall into disrepair and dysfunction.

There will be excuses from your elected representatives. They’ll tell you it’s mostly a local issue, that they don’t have much control over property taxes.

Don’t believe them. As they have proudly proclaimed to the world, they have all the cards. They can do anything they damn well please - even knocking the Governor of Kansas completely out of the way.

The people in power don’t get to crow about how unstoppable they are, then make excuses about why they can’t do anything about the very issues they campaigned on. They can do anything they really want to do. As Waggoner says, it’s a special moment in history “for the legislature’s ability to override a sitting governor.”

Ask them why they didn’t increase the Homestead Exemption rebate, which currently maxes out at $700 for incomes under $42,600. The plan I helped promote several years ago raised the income level to $75,000 and the rebate amount to $1,500 for a total cost of roughly $330 million - far less than this income tax cut for corporations will eat.

Ask them why they didn’t significantly beef up the Safe Senior rebate, which has an income max of $24,500 per year, or the Property tax relief for Seniors and Disabled Vets, which has a max income level of $56,450.

Ask them why they didn’t do the hard work of rolling back the long list of special interest tax exemptions - which hover around $11 billion annually.

Ask them why they lowered the overall tax rate instead of exempting the first $50,000 or so from income tax. If we really wanted a fair income tax decrease, we’d lower it from the bottom, not the top - that provides tax relief for every taxpayer.

These are all meaningful reforms that haven’t gotten any real discussion - because leadership wanted to lower income tax on the upper brackets and find a way to lower the corporate income tax rate. By the time this tax plan is fully implemented - and it certainly will be because legislative leadership will manipulate it - corporations will be paying less than the rate of wage earners in income tax.

And you, as an individual already carry the bulk of the burden for state government.

And never forget that the last time a Republican supermajority got this full of itself, it drove the state into the ditch. It forced increases in local property taxes because the state couldn’t fund help for local governments. It increased our debt - and Kansas is still paying the price of that with a higher per capita debt load that is higher than our neighbors - and approaching national debt levels. Go ask your “conservative” lawmaker why they like paying nearly $500 million a year in debt payments.

The last two Fridays, I wrote that Kansas had been duped, and if all of us can’t see that by now, I doubt that we ever will.

Every election cycle, Republicans run on a mixture of low taxes, low spending, and whatever social bogeyman du jour will scare people into voting for them. Then, when they get into office, they largely become unquestioning followers of their leaders - whose ears are bent by the corporate elite.

That is why they got a corporate tax cut, and you got left holding the bag.

Which is why Lila and I made this sort of mockumentary of the true life legislative process.