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Taxation and Spending

Healthcare Freedom Amendment eight votes short; how did your Rep. vote?

Today the Kansas House took it’s first vote on the proposed Healthcare Freedom Amendment. In light of last night’s stunning vote to essentially nationalize one sixth of our nation’s economy, this amendment is more important than ever to protect Kansans from unconstitutional federal mandates.

To pass, the amendment needs a two-thirds supermajority of 84 votes in the House. Today’s vote was 76-44. Listed below is how the votes came down according to party and yea or nay. Click the members name to get their contact information and call, fax and email them TODAY.

Republican Yeas: Aurand, Bethell, Bowers, Brookens, Brown A, Brunk, Burgess, Carlson, Colloton, Craft, Crum, DeGraaf, Donohoe, Faber, George, Goico, Gordon, Grange, Hayzlett, Hermanson, Hineman, Holmes C, Holmes M, Horst, Huebert, Jack, Kelley, Kerschen, Kiegerl, King, Kinzer, Kleeb, Knox, Landwehr, Light, Mast, McLeland, Merrick, Morrison, Moxley, Myers, Neufeld, O’Brien, O’Neal, Olson, Otto, Patton, Peck, Pottorff, Powell, Prescott, Proehl, Rhoades, Schroeder, Schwab, Schwartz, Seiwert, Shultz, Siegfreid, Spalding, Suellentrop, Swanson, Tafanelli, Vickrey, Whitham, Wolf B, Wolf K, Worley, Yoder.

Contact (preferably by phone) the Republicans below and ask them why they voted against limited government.

Republican NAYS: Nays: Bollier, Hill, Quigley, Roth, Sloan.

Contact (preferably by phone) the Democrats below and ask them to once again vote yea. They will be under pressure to change their vote.

Democrat YEAS: Lukert, Maloney, Meier, Palmer, Svaty, Wetta, Williams.

Contact (preferably by phone) the Democrats below and ask them why they voted nea and ask them to change their vote.

Democrat NAYS: Ballard, Barnes, Benlon, Brown T, Burroughs, Carlin, Crow, Davis, Dillmore, Feuerborn, Finney, Flaharty, Frownfelter, Furtado, Garcia, Gatewood D, Gatewood S, Goyle, Grant, Henry, Kuether, Lane, Loganbill, Long, Mah, McCray-Miller, Menghini, Neighbor, Pauls, Phelps, Rardin, Ruiz, Slattery, Swenson, Talia, Tietze, Trimmer, Ward, Winn.

These Representatives didn’t vote. Keep in mind that they may have not been able to vote due to illness. Contact (preferably by phone) the Representatives below and ask them to make an effort to vote for the Healthcare Freedom Amendment.

Didn’t Vote: Fund (most likely would have been a yea, is currently hospitalized according to fellow House members), Hawk, Henderson, Johnson, Peterson.

KDOT’s Amtrak plans show disregard for Kansas taxpayers

kdotThe Kansas Department of Transportation announced last week that they are seeking to extend an Amtrak line from Dallas, Texas through Wichita and eastern Kansas to Kansas City. The announcement comes at a curious time when KDOT Secretary Deb Miller, Governor Mark Parkinson and former governors Mike Hayden and Bill Graves all came together to demand a tax increase to, “keep Kansas roads number one.”

As a quasi government agency, Amtrak has been loosing money for years and only continues to operate because of federal subsidies. While federal money is outside the control of KDOT, a KDOT press release notes the one time infrastructure improvement costs and annual operating cost of the four different plans.

For example, the first plan estimates an annual ridership of 92,500 at an annual cost burden to the state of $3.2 million. This doesn’t include an estimated $114 million in improvements for the line to operate. And the $114 million doesn’t include local improvements like platforms and train stations, which would have to be provided by local Kansas communities. Just taking into account the state’s annual costs, it comes to $34.60 per rider.

A more expensive alternative would bring in an estimated 174,000 annual riders but would cost the state $8 million a year in operating expenses. Excluding $476 million in infrastructure improvements, that’s just under $46 a rider. If one includes the infrastructure costs and extends out annual costs for 30 years, the cost per rider increases to just over $137 a rider.

Why would KDOT push for a service that would require $8 million a year be taken from their budget when they are canceling new construction and repair projects left and right? Rather than subsidize passenger rail service to potentially $46 a rider or more, couldn’t those millions of dollars be better spent maintaining Kansas roads that would benefit everyone rather than the few who find passenger rail service so nostalgic that they advocate government subsidies to keep Amtrak going?

Couple this with a continuing push to renovate the state capital because ‘material is so cheap’ and lawmakers so desperate to tax rather than cut spending that soda pop is now on the radar, and it certainly leaves Kansas taxpayers wondering just what happened to our government’s priorities.

Liberal Kansas internet groupies flip-flop faster than John Kerry

It’s a set of dance moves that would make John Kerry proud.

Government run healthcare supporters gathered in Wichita Saturday to protest the Healthcare Freedom Amendment (HFA). The Amendment, sponsored by Reps. Brenda Landwehr, Peggy Mast and Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, would try to prevent the federal government from imposing fines, or even jail time, to Kansas citizens who choose not to have health insurance. Opponents of the HFA claim that it would opt Kansas out of any “public option” that passes in Washington. However, no where in the two page document are these provisions found.

The Wichita protest was to target Rep. Landwehr for her support of the HFA and was a follow up to a rally in early November in Shawnee targeting Sen. Pilcher-Cook. At that protest, government healthcare supporters were met by a large group of freedom loving patriots.

The spin from the left was that they were all shipped in by Koch Industries, even though they were unable to produce any evidence of this assertion. One would think big buses with a whole bunch of people would be easy to document. Of course, they are unable to do so because it simply doesn’t exist. Any “busing” by Koch or AFP is pure fiction, a grand lie concocted by liberals to convince themselves only the left can produce an uncoordinated, spontaneous grassroots movement.

The Koch lie seems to be in line with previous attacks by the left, where even they admit they were wrong when challenged to provide evidence.

This morning, I received an e-mail from Melissa “Missy” Cohlmia, the Communications Director for Koch Companies Public Sector. In it, Ms. Cohlmia asked:

“Can you point me to the facts behind this statement? The astroturf movement is paid for by David Koch of Wichita-based Koch Industries to the tune of $20 million of his own treasure.”

Admittedly, I failed in my post yesterday to appropriately link that statement. Mostly, however, that failure was because it’s a commonly known fact that Koch Industries is behind Americans for Prosperity, widely reported by the traditional and non-traditional press.

In fact the truth is AFP now has over 700,000 individual donors. Koch donations now account for less than 5% of AFP’s donations.

But as liberals go, they just couldn’t stop themselves and had to go even further.

One way that’s ever so popular with liberals is parading the children around. We must do it for the children, don’t you know! Thus Kansas’ 58,000 uninsured children becomes the call for more government programs. Of course, never mind there’s already a program out there called Kansas Healthwave. To a common sense Kansan that’d be evidence of a government failure, but to a liberal, it’s a call to more government action.

In fact, it seems the lefties have gotten themselves so worked up, they’ve forgotten what exactly happened in Shawnee less than a month ago.

In a weekend update, the left says things never got out of hand.

Despite the tone of our local Fox affiliate, that morning never got ugly. Passions are high on both sides, but never did the event escalate over some shouting matches.

But just a few weeks later, an organizer with the same liberal blog told a very different story to the Wichita Eagle.

“We had a bunch of (tea party supporters) come out and get pretty much in everybody’s faces,” said Sarah Burris, a spokeswoman for Forward Kansas. “They just want to raise a ruckus.”

Could it be liberals change their story based on what they think will get them the most traction in the press?

It also looks as though it’s okay to come from out of town for the rally, just as long as you make the trek for the right side. Just before the Shawnee rally, liberals had this to say:

…none, I repeat none, of the pro-Reform rally members will be bused in from surrounding areas — like American’s for Prosperity and David Koch did in Washington DC yesterday.

But they boasted of all the out of town folks for yesterday’s gathering:

Many of the demonstrators drove to Wichita from cities all over Kansas. Colin Curtis, of Manhattan made the trip because he wanted to ensure his side was represented in the debate

And I guess when flip-flopping on your version of protest etiquette doesn’t yield the results you want, you can always just start calling names.

From Twitter:

  • @sarahburris: If you use teabagger in a press release do we think they’ll use it? #fwks
  • @sarahburris: @immunis the experts say only if its in a quote just FYI #fwks

From the Wichita Eagle:

“We had a bunch of (tea party supporters) come out and get pretty much in everybody’s faces,” said Sarah Burris, a spokeswoman for Forward Kansas.

Now that’s a term even the Wichita Eagle won’t publish, try as the liberals might.

I’m willing to make a decent bet (tea party supporters) was inserted because the liberal’s spokeswoman decided to use a derogatory term for their opponents rather than show a little class.

Unfortunately, facts don’t get in the way of liberals. Their perception is reality, no matter how skewed it is, no matter how little evidence they have to support their assertions.

It’s the kind of insinuations and lies we should expect from this group in the future.

New report on uninsured children confirms Healthwave enrollment failures

“Though Kansas is experiencing a growth in its rate of uninsured children, it is important to note that the overwhelming majority of uninsured Kansas children are income-eligible for Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, collectively known as HealthWave. When the Legislature’s expansion of HealthWave eligibility levels (from 200% to 250% of poverty) goes into effect Jan. 1, 2010, it is estimated that more than three-fourths of the uninsured children in Kansas will be eligible for coverage through HealthWave.”

Kansas Action for Children released a new report yesterday that claims Kansas is continuing to fail its children when it comes to health insurance. This is a hard fact to face in light of a long time state program called Kansas Healthwave that is supposed to provide low and no income families with health insurance for their children.

In fact, the press release by KAC ignores the failure of Kansas Healthwave to enroll children, which is clearly stated in the their report, as seen in the quote above.

In fact, the report highlights the need to increase enrollment and retain children already in the program to decrease those without insurance. These actions both involve minimal effort by the state and certainly do not call for another government program. Further, the KAC report notes what was already known, that Kansas Healthwave has been a failure of a program and one government failure doesn’t justify the need for a new one, as many on the left currently advocate.

From the report:

The best approach to addressing the state’s increased rate of uninsured children is two-fold. We need to focus on outreach efforts to ensure that more Kansas families enroll their children in HealthWave. But, we also need to place an emphasis on retaining eligible children who are already enrolled in HealthWave. Similar to other states, Kansas struggles to retain eligible children in the program, which results in children “churning” in and out of HealthWave.

Any attempt by the left to use this report as a reason for more government action is asinine in light of the current failure of government to get the job done, as highlighted by the report itself. But more importantly, such action would be dishonest and deceitful, in full contradiction of the facts, and clearly only done to advance a narrow, partisan political agenda.

Liberal-socialists ignore government failure in insuring children

“In Kansas, the percentage of uninsured children continues to rise, according to 2008 data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. The increase runs counter to the national census data, which indicated a slight drop in the number of uninsured children.”

This past Saturday free market conservatives turned out at Shawnee City Hall to advocate for a return of the federal government to its constitutional bounds. They were met by liberal-socialist protesters who want more government involvement. One of the signs at the rally claimed there are 58,000 uninsured children in Kansas, an apparent fact the left wants to use as an argument to justify more government spending.

One has to wonder if liberal-socialists understand what their facts say about government involvement in the healthcare system to date. A September 10 KHI article notes that the number of uninsured children in Kansas has actually risen significantly the previous few years. This would be an apparent call for government action if you believe the government is a solution.

But doesn’t the state of Kansas already have a program in place that is supposed to insure children when their family can’t afford to do so? Of course, it’s called Kansas Healthwave!

According to the Healthwave website, parents can obtain no cost or low cost health insurance for their kids as long as their income is below 200% of the federal poverty level. That’s $3,675 per month for a family of four. With such high income guidelines, why are nearly 1 in 10 Kansas children still uninsured?

Isn’t this convincing evidence of the failure of government? Rather than finding a problem and then demanding government fix it, wouldn’t it be smarter to find out why the problem exists and then try to fix the reasons behind the problem rather than just demanding more government?

Only liberal-socialists would take a government failure and use it as fodder to demand more government.