Blogs For Victory

One does begin to wonder if Democrats, on the whole, know what law is, and why we must be a nation of laws, not men:

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is demanding the Kansas Legislature join with her in violating state law to use the budget crisis to score political points, top House Republicans told Kansas Liberty Monday.

“The Legislature doesn’t have the luxury of operating outside the law,” said House Speaker Mike O’Neal. “Kansas for years has had on the books procedures a governor can follow in times like these, but she’s refused to exercise those options, to the detriment of the state. She’s better than that. It just seems she’s going out of her way to make people upset with the Legislature.”

The latest budget drama began Monday when Sebelius called a meeting of the State Finance Council to seek authority for a $225 million certificate of indebtedness to cover a cash flow crisis.

That meeting ultimately was postponed, Republican legislative leaders said, when they made clear to Sebelius that the Legislature couldn’t authorize additional debt.

O’Neal and House Majority Leader Ray Merrick, in conversations with Kansas Liberty, cited an analysis by Legislative Research Director Alan Conroy that concludes such an action would be illegal because the state wouldn’t be able to cover the certificate by the end of the current fiscal year, on June 30, as required by state statute KSA 75-3725(a).

However, the Sebelius administration contended Monday that approval of an additional certificate of indebtedness would not be contrary to state law.

“Legally we are ready to go,” said State Budget Director Duane Goossen at a hastily called press conference late Monday.

Goossen had created a spreadsheet that he said described how the certificate of indebtedness could be used to borrow money, and that all that was needed was authorization by the State Finance Council. He was less clear on how the money would be repaid, a legal requirement. The certificate would raise internal borrowing to record levels.

The relevant statute is here, and it does appear to agree with the Majority Leader’s assertion about the illegality of Governor Sebelius’ proposal.

Be that as it may, here is what we’ve got – a budget crunch in Kansas will require some cuts in spending which the Democrat governor does not wish to make; the governor cooks up a plan to illegally used debt to cover the shortfall so that she doesn’t have to cut her pet projects; naturally, such a plan would not pass muster with a GOP-controlled legislature, so the governor announces that the people of Kansas won’t get their tax refunds and State employees won’t get paid and then relies on the MSM to use her narrative of events, thus putting the onus on the GOP, which merely wants to obey the law. Its clever politics, but entirely dishonest and in direct contravention of the long-term interests of the people of Kansas…but such considerations aren’t important for Democrats, only power and the spending which creates power matter.

We can now see why governor Sebelius has found herself de-facto excommunicated from the Catholic Church – the dishonesty which propelled her to making immoral moves on the issue of life is the same dishonesty which is now instructing her to break the laws of Kansas. I urge the governor of Kansas to re-think her life’s work…to come to an understanding that politics is not the highest expression of human life and that some times we have to bend to the harsh realities of our times. In the end, remember, its really just a matter of not spending as much as she’d like as soon as she’d like – it profits a man (or woman) nothing to gain the whole world, but lose his soul…governor Sebelius seems to be willing to lose hers over a bit of welfare spending, plus or minus.