Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

Things aren't going very well for Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin.  He figured by this point in 2018 he'd have both his pension bill that takes the retirements of thousands of Kentucky teachers taken out back and shot, and that his across-the-board state budget austerity cuts would be well in hand with the new GOP majority in Frankfort.

Then reality happened.

Kentucky House Speaker Jeff Hoover's career imploded after he resigned the speaker's post over a sexual harassment scandal, un-resigned, then resigned again after the furor got too much to handle.  Republican State Rep. Dan Johnson got caught in his own sexual assault scandal, committed suicide, and his wife ran for his seat and lost to a Democratic teacher in the special election to replace him.  Now it looks like the pension bill, Bevin's crowning achievement in the field of punishing those evil, greedy, overpaid teachers, is dead on arrival and Bevin is going to take the blame for stepping on his own crank.

Senate Bill 1 would end traditional pensions for future teachers and cut retired teachers’ cost-of-living allowances, among other cost-saving changes.

Senate leadership has said it will be difficult to pass such a bill before the legislative session ends April 13. 

“It has a very limited and difficult path forward at this point in time,” Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said Wednesday. 

Bevin pointed out that he has fully funded the system, which had gone years without full funding. 

But he said continuing to put more and more money in without structural change would be “like putting water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom of it. ...We have to patch the bottom of the bucket in this case before we fill it up.” 

The video statement came just days after Bevin’s comments in a radio interview drew outrage from teachers. 

On Tuesday while speaking to a Campbellsville radio station, Bevin said teachers who oppose Senate Bill 1 were “selfish” and “ignorant,” and he compared them to disloyal Americans who hoarded rationed goods during World War II. 

“This would be like people having mass demonstrations about, ‘No I want my butter, I want my sugar, I’m going to keep all my steel and my rubber and my copper, and to heck with the rest of you people, you better keep giving me mine,’” Bevin said. “...It’s just straight up about wanting more than your fair share.” 

Teachers responded Thursday, speaking out against the governor’s characterization at “walk-in” rallies in protest of SB 1. 

Bevin said in the video Saturday that he has “tremendous respect for those of you who are teaching.”

Too little, too late.  Bevin's trying to save his cuts, but even in Kentucky, Republicans can and will get burned as the Trump effect drowns the GOP nationwide and they know it.  Republicans in Kentucky already have horrific press here this year, and "passing a bill to wreck teachers" on top of two massive sexual misconduct scandals and Bevin being a giant asshole just might be enough to actually hand the House back to the Dems.  Maybe.  (That's a long shot.)

But that's how bad things have gotten for Kentucky Republicans this year.

Oh, and the budget is still a complete disaster.

The Senate has no plans to raise taxes on painkillers and cigarettes — a move the House approved to raise about $500 million over the next two years for education and other programs. 

The Republican-led Senate is in the process of writing its own version of the state’s two-year budget, but leaders won’t yet say what their decision to jettison the proposed tax increases means for education. 

“I don’t know about that. You’ll have to wait and see our budget,” Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, told reporters Friday after voicing opposition to the tax increases. 

Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, said Friday the full Senate is expected to vote on its budget bill next Tuesday or Wednesday after it is approved by the Senate budget committee. 

Republican House leaders said the extra money by their proposed tax package would be used largely to reverse spending cuts to education programs proposed by Gov. Matt Bevin, also a Republican. 

The House plan includes raising the tax on a pack of cigarettes by 50 cents to $1.10 and levying a 25 cent tax on prescription opioids each time a dosage is sold by a distributor to a pharmacy, the first such tax in the country. 

With the extra revenue, the House offered more to education than Bevin proposed, including funding for transportation at K-12 schools, a state subsidy of health insurance costs for retired teachers who aren’t old enough to qualify for Medicare, the main funding formula for schools and public universities. 

Stivers said there is “a real question” about the legality of taxing opioids. He said the tax on cigarettes would not be good policy because it would be based on a shrinking source of revenue. 

Once the Senate approves its budget bill, a conference committee made up of leaders from the House and Senate, will be formed to iron out differences between the two chambers.

Half a billion dollars in new taxes on Kentucky smokers (and yeah, we have one of the highest smoking rates in the nation at 30%)  isn't going to win over a lot of friends I'm thinking, not to mention taxing prescription painkillers even being legal.  Vice taxes are regressive, period, and it's only going to hurt people in the long run.

In the short run, who knows what the Kentucky Senate will do.  Kentucky is an economic disaster right now, and the blame falls squarely on Matt Bevin's "leadership".