Looking for Senator Reasonable

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Below, Alan Cobb of Americans for Prosperity Foundation provides rebuttal to a recent op-ed by H. Edward Flentje of the Hugo Wall School of Urban and Public Affairs at Wichita State University. In his op-ed (Senate elections will shape state’s future, June 24, 2012 Wichita Eagle) Flentje explains his interpretation of the importance of eight Kansas Senate races where Republican incumbents have conservative challengers. These races will likely determine balance of power in the Senate, which has been controlled by a coalition of Democrats and left-leaning Republicans, usually called “moderate” Republicans. A version of this appeared in the Wichita Eagle.

Looking for Senator Reasonable

By Alan Cobb, Americans for Prosperity Foundation

I’ve been looking for those reasonable Kansas state senators who occupy leadership positions that my friend Ed Flentje mentioned a few days ago in this paper. I looked and looked, but can’t find them.

The Senate leadership I’ve seen for more than the last decade certainly isn’t opposed to tax increases, sometimes actively supporting them, and has done everything they can to thwart any kind of spending reform.

Nearly every good piece of public policy that has passed the Kansas Legislature during this time frame has been despite Senate leadership efforts to stop it. This includes the nation’s first budget transparency act, which AFP worked hand-in-hand with the Kansas Press Association to pass, over strong objections and efforts to kill the bill by Republican leaders in the Senate

I always smile when so-called “traditional” Kansas Republicans invoke the name of one of my heroes, Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower was hardly a moderate. He was the last President to oversee a true reduction of Federal spending. Over the last several decades, Kansas moderates treat spending increases as fait accompli and spending cuts as the end of the world as we know it. This is not how Eisenhower would have governed and this is not how he did govern.

Senate leaders and those who have supported them have not exercised fiscal restraint as Dr. Flentje states, and to say so really strains credulity. Or in the vernacular I like to use, that dog don’t hunt.

Since Steve Morris was elected Senate President in 2004, State General Fund spending has increased almost 31 percent while inflation during that same time period has been a little over 18 percent. Total Kansas government spending, including Federal contributions, has increased more than 39 percent. Though 2012 data isn’t available yet, population growth in Kansas from 2004 to 2011 has increased by a disappointing 4.5 percent.

Most Kansans, including those of the traditional moderate Republican persuasion probably would not describe that as fiscal restraint.

This group of moderate senators has not proposed alternatives and has simply made every effort to stop legislation supported by Gov. Brownback and other limited government, free market senators. As much as being so-called moderates, this group of senators has really been simply anti-conservative. It really isn’t much of an intellectual base for public policy.

Those that support a different path for our State want something better for Kansans. Certainly those that support the status quo desire the same. The results of the status quo are known. We shall see the outcome of bold change

I agree with Dr. Flentje that the results of August 7 could fundamentally change the future of Kansas. Under the current leadership that can be traced to Govs. Mike Hayden, Joan Finney, Bill Graves and Kathleen Sebelius, we’ve seen significant state budget growth, large state debt increase, state tax increases, sluggish economic growth and slow population growth. We have more people moving out of Kansas than moving in and those moving out are headed to states with a lower tax burden than Kansas.

I don’t know about the rest of the state, but this Kansan does not think that is a path that we should continue.

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