Reckless Gov. Sam Brownback strikes again with even more budget cuts

What was the worst thing Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback did Wednesday?

(Warning: The answers to all these questions are that they are all bad, the result of the governor’s latest lame attempts to balance the budget in a cash-starved state.)

Was it the reckless $97 million in overall budget cuts he announced late in the afternoon?

Or the shameful, two-faced statement he released claiming he was putting “more money back in the hands of working Kansans” only a year after he supported the largest tax increase in state history?

Was it slashing $30 million from the state’s once-prized universities, which left officials reeling from that higher-than-expected amount?

Or was it slicing Medicaid reimbursement rates, which could damage the quality of health care for less well-off Kansans?

How about the lame across-the-board cuts to state agencies, showing Brownback can’t set priorities for the most crucial public services?

Was it the $3.35 million reduction in the Children’s Initiatives Fund, yet another example of how the Kansas budget woes are harming the state’s most vulnerable residents?

Was it the sheer cluelessness of Brownback blaming the state’s fiscal problems on slumping oil, agriculture and aviation industries — and not on the true problem, the loss of more than $600 million in annual revenues caused by his irresponsible 2012 income tax cuts?

Was it Brownback’s decision to divert even more tens of millions of dollars from the state’s highway improvement fund, which will pull the plug on road projects in mostly rural areas?

Or, finally, could it have been the governor’s almost cavalier act to delay putting a state contribution of up to $100 million into the public employees’ pension fund?

Brownback keeps digging Kansas into a deeper fiscal hole with his unwise budget decisions, all of which go straight back to the granddaddy of all rash moves — the 2012 income tax cuts.

They haven’t worked out as planned. They have not pushed companies that benefited from lower or no taxes to hire a lot more people. They have not led to his promised surge in public revenues.

Parts or all of the tax cuts need to be rescinded before Kansas slips further into the abyss.

One more question: How can that be done?

Kansans need to elect new, different lawmakers in the August primary and November general elections. Get rid of the ultra-conservative legislators who have allied themselves with Brownback and put more moderate Republicans and Democrats into office.

The destructive Brownback needs to be marginalized. Kansas voters have the power, even the duty, to do that.

This story was originally published May 18, 2016 at 6:25 PM with the headline "Reckless Gov. Sam Brownback strikes again with even more budget cuts."