What if a political party holding near total power in a state admits to stalling bills for nakedly political purposes?
What if a political party holding near total power in a state admits to throwing away taxpayer money?
What if a political party holding near total power in a state admits to planning a repeat of budgetary catastrophe?
House Republican Majority Leader Chris Croft has turned those rhetorical questions above into all-too-real ones. Recordings of private Zoom calls among Croft and other Republicans were obtained by Kansas Reflector this week, and they show him making a strong case for why his party should lose its legislative supermajority. If a supposedly fiscally and temperamentally conservative party can’t restrain its urges to spend like a teenager with their first credit card, why should voters trust it?
Fair-minded folks would wonder why that political party holds so much power, and they might ponder whether its opponents could do better. You know, just as a f’rinstance.
Take it away, Croft!
On passing both a tax cut package and a stadium plan for Kansas City sports franchises: “I don’t want to give her what we currently have and that, because then she’s going to take credit, and that’ll be her signature. We want to make it painful to get there.”
On spending levels overall: “In the last six years that the governor’s been there, and by the way, the six years I’ve been there, we’ve increased spending 56%. It’s awful. We got to stop this. I mean, we’re just as drunk on that money as anybody else is. We got to stop doing that.”
On future tax plans reminiscent of former Gov. Sam Brownback’s failed experiment: Croft is working toward “reducing the corporate tax rate overall with the intent to drive it to zero. So that’s, that was what the objective is, and that’s what the objective will be.”
I don’t see why Kansas Democrats need to print up their own mail or radio or TV ads for November. They could just share Croft’s words far and wide. They come from a source deep inside GOP leadership, after all.
In the meantime, Republicans showed themselves utterly clueless when it came to the actual needs of Kansans.
Randy Ross, of Overland Park, is challenging Democratic Rep. Dan Osman. On a May 31 call, he responded to a question from Croft about what candidates were hearing as they knocked on doors: “Republicans, for some reason, seem to focus more on local property taxes, and I was not able to really discern the reason why they were as much focused on that.”
Gosh, I wonder why people are asking about the taxes they actually pay instead of the corporate taxes the GOP wants to cut.
I don’t mean to pick on the majority leader. If anything, we could benefit from members of both parties sharing their unvarnished thoughts and plans for the upcoming session. I’m sure Democratic bigwigs could embarrass themselves and their party if given the chance.
Because we all function in the gigantic professional wrestling arena of partisan politics, however, we’re asked to believe things that Kansas Republicans themselves clearly don’t believe.
They have no leg to stand on when it comes to fiscal responsibility. They prize partisan sniping over good policy. And they have never accepted the complete and utter collapse of Brownback’s economic experiment. Nearly every year after the plan’s 2017 repeal, GOP lawmakers have extolled some new supply-side scheme. Croft’s “objective” is the latest example.
But if the professional wrestling match is going to go on, let it go on. One of the contestants has just let his mask fall a little too low for comfort.
Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
