We're Not In Kansas Anym...Wait We Are?

A major budget showdown is shaping up in another broke-ass state, this time it's Kansas.

State tax refunds, Medicaid reimbursements and payments to local schools are all on hold because of a political showdown between Kansas legislative leaders and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

The Kansas Finance Council was to meet at 1 p.m. today to vote on whether to borrow $225 million from healthy state funds to cover expected payments to schools, state workers and taxpayers. The state did the same thing last December when it ran into a cash-flow problem.

But Republican leaders said they wouldn’t authorize the new loans until Sebelius, a Democrat, signs legislation designed to erase the state’s current year budget deficit. That bill, passed Thursday, cuts statewide school funding by $32 million and makes millions more in cuts to other state agencies.

State officials are scrambling right now to determine what the cash flow problem will mean. Budget director Duane Goossen said it’s likely to mean a delay in tax refunds, state employee pay, reimbursement to Medicaid providers and school districts.

While the No-Publicans may be stonewalled nationally, in red states like Kansas they still control the purse strings, and they're exacting a gruesome toll upon Democrats on a state level.

Then again, basically all state governments are in trouble in one form or another and are facing massive budget cuts in 2009 and 2010. Republicans are screaming that services need to be cut just at the time they are needed the most to pick up the slack in system. They're also screaming for cuts in education, too...I wonder why that is?

[UPDATE] Kansas may have serious problems, but they're nothing compared to the fact California's state government is on the brink of disintegration.

“It is a dramatic time,” said Darrell Steinberg, the State Senate’s president pro tempore. “The solvency of the state is on the line. It is really quite a system where the fate of the state rests upon the shoulders of a couple of members of a minority party. The system frankly needs to be changed.”

In the meantime, motorists are met with “closed” signs at Department of Motor Vehicles offices two days a month, environmental programs are left unattended, piles of dirt mark where highway lanes are to be built to ease the state’s infamous traffic congestion, school systems mull layoffs and counties prepare to sue the state for nonpayment of bills.

Last week, Mr. Schwarzenegger and the four legislative leaders concurred on a series of bills that included $15.1 billion in budget cuts, $14.4 billion in tax increases and $11.4 billion in borrowing, much of it subject to voter approval.

The Senate Republican leader, Dave Cogdill, said he thought he had all the votes needed to get the deal done in each house. But on Sunday, two Republican senators — Dave Cox, who was originally thought to be the last vote needed, and Abel Maldonado, whom Mr. Schwarzenegger had been able to woo into voting against his party in the past — said they would reject the plan.

If there's no deal in California soon, Obama may have to step in.