THE
TRUTH
REPORT
A Weekly Rundown of Important Activity in Topeka, from a Principled Perspective
|
|
Week One -- January 21, 2019
|
|
"I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts."
~ Ronald Reagan
|
|
The Facts of the Matter is a feature in The Truth Report each week, highlighting important information, some of which is not always reported or emphasized in the mainstream press:
|
|
- Governor Laura Kelly lost 96 counties. Laura Kelly won the November election with less than 48% of the vote, and in doing so, only carried nine of our state’s 105 counties. Such numbers indicate that there is no mandate in place to implement a left-wing agenda.
- Short-Term Health Care Plans Extended, but Kansas Must Act to Maximize Benefit. One ACA rule change extended the length of short-term health policies from 90 days to 364 days and allows individuals to renew short-term healthcare policies twice instead of once. The federal policy change will allow individuals to use a short-term health care plan for almost three years, but Kansas lawmakers will have to make a statutory change so Kansans can renew a short-time policy more than once. (Source)
- Medicaid expansion will not pay for itself. Proponents of expanding Medicaid under ObamaCare often claim that it will “pay for itself” – however, the facts tell a different story, as Medicaid spending increases outpace overall state fund general revenue growth. According to National Association of State Budget Officers, across the country total general fund revenues grew 6.2% over the previous year and the private economy grew 3.0%, but Medicaid spending grew 8.4%. In Kansas, during FY 2018, state fund expenditures grew 6.1%, our private economy grew 1.0%, but Kansas Medicaid spending grew 7.5% -without expanding Medicaid. (Source)
|
|
News & Views is a weekly collection of relevant news items and editorials regarding what's going on in Topeka and around the State of Kansas.
|
|
Kansas, Welcome to the Era of a Liberal Governor
The Kansas Truth Caucus took a strong stance in favor of the Adoption Protection Act, which was enacted last year.
There are a number of resources which you can read on the Adoption Protection Act, all available at the
Adoption Protection Act Resource Center, located on our website by
clicking here
.
The
linked editorial from Brittany Jones, the Director of Advocacy with the Family Policy Alliance of Kansas, indicates that Governor Laura Kelly is likely taking aim at this important legislation.
Key Excerpt:
As I asked Governor Kelly in a press release yesterday, “Is there evidence your own administration is engaging in discriminatory activity, or is this an executive order in search of a problem?”
In reality, there is reason to believe this action is intended to strip protections for faith-based adoption agencies. Governor Kelly has called the Adoption Protection Act (which protects faith-based adoption agencies) passed by the legislature last year the “Adoption Discrimination Act,” pledging to do whatever she can to repeal it or ignore it. It’s clear that she’s coming after the faith-based community with all she has, which is why we need your help. We will keep a close eye this legislative session on the Governor’s actions during the legislative session to protect the religious freedom for all Kansans. We stand with you!
|
|
Transparency Center: Follow the Kansas Legislature
You can view video streaming of both chambers via the Kansas Legislature YouTube page. In addition, many committees are now audio streamed. Finally, the Kansas Legislature website remains a great resource. Here are the relevant links:
|
|
A New Era: Inaugural Week in Topeka
|
|
At Noon on January 14
th, on a chilly Monday in Topeka, a new era descended on Kansas. Governor Laura Kelly, who won just nine of 105 counties, was sworn in along with her Lt. Governor Lynn Rogers, Attorney General Derek Schmidt, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, State Treasurer Jacob LaTurner, and Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt.
Despite the lack of a mandate from voters, the new administration’s policy proposals, as we will detail later in this Truth Report, are well to the left of most Kansans. Larger government, more debt, higher taxes, and threats to our liberty are already proving to be the hallmark of the governor’s agenda.
Two hours later, inside the Capitol, 125 State Representatives and four new State Senators were sworn in. The good news for Kansans is that the makeup of the Kansas Legislature is decidedly more in line with conservative principles than the previous two years.
Should legislators who campaigned on these principles stick together, the legislature will provide a substantial check against left-wing tendencies of the new administration. If not, then the Kansas taxpayer will be left holding the bill.
|
|
In Government We Trust: Kelly Agenda Points Towards Overspending, Increasing Dependency, and Expanded Government
|
|
In his State of the Union address in 1997, President Bill Clinton famously declared, “The era of big government is over.” In 2019, in her State of the State address, Governor Laura Kelly essentially declared that the era of big government is back in Kansas.
This new reality, if the governor has her way, is reflected in both her remarks and her budget. Her $18.4 billion spending spree would make history by being the largest in our history, with spending increasing by a whopping $1.2 billion, or 7.2%.
Get out your calculators, and let’s add up the spending. Among the items in the governor’s budget:
- The governor embraces the failed ObamaCare program by expanding Medicaid to able-bodied adults, thus undermining the real purpose of Medicaid, which is to help the elderly, the poor, and those who cannot work. This is $30 million in new spending on an annual basis.
- The governor wants to add hundreds of millions of more money to education, on top of the hundreds of millions previously allocated in the last three legislative sessions, including $800 million over the last two years. This is $527 million in new spending. As a reminder, Kansas is now spending over $14,000 per child and over 50% of the state budget on K-12 education.
- The governor wants to continue to play math games by raiding transportation funds, sometimes referred to as the “bank of KDOT,” to the tune of $200 million.
- The governor even proposes re-amortization of KPERS, which in “real terms,” refinances the $8.9 billion debt over 30 years. While providing a short-term boost in revenue today, it passes on a much larger bill tomorrow and extends the retirement system’s debt until the year 2049. The governor’s budget director indicated the debt would become an additional cost of about $7 billion. On Friday, the KPERS Board rejected the governor’s idea unanimously, calling it “terrible” and “unwise.”
Kansas may be a red state, but Governor Kelly may be confusing that with a state operating in the red, which is exactly what would happen if the governor’s proposals were to be adopted, thus necessitating a tax increase.
|
|
What Was Missing from the Governor’s Budget? More Money in Kansans’ Pockets
|
|
Candidate Laura Kelly proposed decreasing the sales tax on food, which is among the highest in the nation. However, Governor Laura Kelly proposes no such decrease in her budget, opting to kick that can down the road yet again.
In fact, there seems to be no emphasis at all, in any of the governor’s remarks, on any meaningful reduction in the taxes hard-working Kansans pay to the state. Instead, the Governor seems to be squandering the surplus on spending that will lead Kansas into debt, grow government and increase dependency within our state.
The Kansas Truth Caucus believes we should expand liberty and opportunity, promote greater economic freedom, and keep the size of government limited and focused on core services.
|
|
Truth Caucus Responds to Kelly Agenda
|
|
On Thursday evening, the Kansas Truth Caucus issued the following release in response to the State of the State and the proposals contained within the governor’s budget:
|
|
Kelly Agenda: In Government We Trust
Overspending, Increasing Dependency, and Expanding Government
|
|
The Kansas Truth Caucus, an organization of nearly 50 members of both the Kansas House and Senate, responded to Governor Laura Kelly's remarks in the State of the State, as well as the priorities she outlined in her budget released today.
"Elections have consequences - and the taxpayers of Kansas are about to be hit in the pocketbook. The new governor spent the bulk of her speech highlighting how she plans to spend Kansans' hard-earned money by increasing the size and scope of government," the Caucus noted, adding, "Yet, in the same speech, she felt compelled to lecture legislators, those with the power of the purse, about fiscal responsibility. Perhaps these contrary objectives are the result of the governor's realization that her number one policy objective, expanding the failed ObamaCare program, would decimate the state budget, just as it has done over and over again in the states who have taken that leap."
Senator Ty Masterson, Chair of the Kansas Truth Caucus, noted the absence of a key promise from the campaign - a reduction in the sales tax on food.
"The reduction of the food sales tax for Kansas families represented a unique opportunity for Governor Kelly to work with conservatives, yet it was nowhere to be found in her remarks or her budget and has apparently taken a back seat to more spending and bigger government. The fact lowering the food sales tax is apparently such a low priority for the governor means that her campaign rhetoric was just that - rhetoric," said Masterson.
Rep. Jene Vickrey Vice Chair of the Kansas Truth Caucus, said that while many Kansans agree with the need to address the issues Governor Kelly addressed, there must be a prioritization in the state budget.
"At a time when future spending is already beyond our means, we cannot afford the items the governor proposed without further burdening hard-working Kansas taxpayers. Critical topics like mental health and roads simply must be addressed, and that requires prioritization and a prudent approach to spending, which is absent from the governor's proposals," said Vickrey.
|
|
Republican Response to State of the State
|
|
Following the State of the State, the Republican Response was delivered by Senate President Susan Wagle, which you can view by
clicking here. In her remarks, she outlined several key Republican priorities, which include:
- Paying off debts to KPERS
- Returning the “windfall” from the Trump tax cuts to Kansas taxpayers
- Improved student outcomes through raising standards and emulating models of teaching success.
The Kansas Truth Caucus agrees with Senator Wagle that “The windfall from the Trump tax cuts belongs to Kansas taxpayers, not government.”
|
|
On Friday, the March for Life was held in Washington, D.C., drawing hundreds of thousands of people to the theme “Unique From Day One.”
As the March for Life website indicates
, “being pro-life is not in opposition to science. It’s quite the opposite in fact! Medical and technological advancements continue to reaffirm the science behind the pro-life cause – that life begins at fertilization, or day one, when egg meets sperm and a new, unique, human embryo is created.”
This coming Tuesday, a March for Life will also be held in Topeka. You can learn more about that event by
clicking here
.
|
|
Protecting the Adoption Protection Act
|
|
This past week,
Governor Kelly issued an Executive Order (EO) providing LGBT state employees protected class status, reinstating an order under former Governor Kathleen Sebelius. Notably, Governor Kelly’s EO expanded the scope of the original Sebelius EO to include employees of state contractors.
As the Family Policy Alliance of Kansas pointed out in
this release
, the EO “
threatens protections for faith-based ministries in Kansas that were appropriately passed by the law-making branch of government,” and further raises the question, “Is there evidence your own administration is engaging in discriminatory activity, or is this an executive order in search of a problem?”
An attack on the Adoption Protection Act is clearly the governor’s intent, as she made it clear after the election that she would attempt to circumvent the law passed last year. More broadly speaking, sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) laws and orders, such as the one signed by Governor Kelly, pose serious problems for free markets and contracts, free speech and religious liberty, the health of our culture, and pluralism.
|
|
Left-wing Legislation Alert: Democrats Push to Expand Medicaid
|
|
In 2017 and 2018, Democrats in the Kansas Legislature made repeated attempts to increase the reach of the failed ObamaCare program by expanding Medicaid. In 2019, those efforts will renew with even more intensity now that they have a friend of ObamaCare in the governor’s office.
Despite the pie-in-the-sky talking points provided by proponents of Medicaid expansion, the reality is that there are both compelling moral and fiscal arguments against the notion.
The chief moral argument is that expanding
ObamaCare in this fashion puts those who are most needy at the back of the line
, behind able-bodied adults. By diverting scarce resources from our most vulnerable citizens, ObamaCare creates a perverse incentive in favor of able-bodied adults. As
reported
by Jonathan Ingram of the Foundation for Government Accountability,
"ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion has drawn a line in the sand. On one side, the states that reject Medicaid expansion in order to protect their most vulnerable patients; on the other are the states that embrace ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion and put their neediest patients at risk."
Fiscally, it is simply imprudent to expand ObamaCare. The cost of expanding the Medicaid program to able-bodied adults is unsustainable for the Kansas taxpayer. Over ten years, it is estimated to cost Kansas taxpayers over $1.2 billion to expand Medicaid.
That is $1.2 billion that would be diverted from not only Medicaid funding for the disabled and the elderly, but also from education, infrastructure, and public safety funding.
In the coming days, the Kansas Truth Caucus will create a resource center on our website detailing the case against expanding Medicaid.
|
|
Every week, the Truth Report contains a “Wallet Watch," where we examine efforts to remove money from the wallets of hard-working Kansans.
|
|
As noted by President Susan Wagle during her Republican Response to the State of the State address, candidate Laura Kelly campaigned on not increasing taxes. Yet, the budget proposed by Governor Laura Kelly would spend Kansas into the red, thus necessitating a tax increase. Of course, the governor does not indicate what taxes she would raise, and in fact, she continues to rely upon budgetary gimmicks she herself decried when used in previous administrations.
In order for Kansas to achieve the goal of long-term fiscal security, we must end the “spend first, pay the bill later” mentality. The Kansas Truth Caucus looks forward to championing fiscal responsibility.
|
|
Thank You! That's it for this week!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
