Last month, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) signed a package of stringent abortion restrictions into law, including a “personhood” clause that defines life as beginning at fertilization that puts abortion rights into jeopardy and could also endanger access to in vitro fertilization and some forms of contraception. Given that these new laws may skirt the legal precedent that a woman has a right to access an abortion, the state will have to spend money defending them from lawsuits. That sum could come to well over $1 million, as Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has requested $500,000 more to fund the legal battle on top of the $800,000 it spent last year.

But Kansas has been dealing with budget cuts, particularly in Brownback’s most recent budget that reduced overall state spending by $465 million while also cutting income taxes. Taxpayer money that is being spent on defending these legally questionable laws could be going to many other important programs:

1. Restoring sequestration cuts: Sequestration is going to impact every state with its across-the-board cuts, taking a bite out of programs that have already dealt with decreased funding in recent years. With just over $1 million, Kansas could restore all funding to a variety of vital programs: law enforcement and public safety, job search assistance, vaccines for children, domestic violence services, nutrition assistance for seniors, and upgrades to public health threat response.

2. Tobacco prevention: Kansas ranks 39th in the U.S. for spending on tobacco prevention programs, as it spends under $1 million, just .62 percent of the $161 million it pulls in from tobacco-generated revenue. Yet prevention programs have been found to be highly effective at lowering tobacco use as well as cost effective: One study estimated that returns could be as much as $50 saved for every $1 spent thanks to avoiding tobacco-related health problems. The state could double its already low efforts with the money spent defending its new anti-abortion laws.

3. Arts funding: In 2011, Kansas became the first state without an arts agency when Brownback vetoed funding for the Kansas Arts Commission. The Kansas legislature had recommended appropriating just $689,000 to fund the agency, which would have allowed the state to continue receiving $1.2 million in federal and regional arts funding. The state funding could more than be restored, bringing arts grant dollars back to the state and reinvigorating an arts and nonprofit sector that generates $153.5 million a year in economic activity.

4. Drinking water protection: As part of the spending cuts in Brownback’s most recent budget, he used his line-item veto on some programs, including $800,000 for LEPP, the Local Environmental Protection Program. That program provided grants to local health departments to monitor wastewater and water systems and enforce regulations in order to protect drinking water. State officials have warned that without the program, the state will see increased health problems, lawsuits, and local fees for installing septic tanks and other systems, as well as non-compliance with federal environmental laws.

5. Higher education: College and university budgets have been struggling with decreased state funding, and Kansas is no exception. One community college, Kansas City Kansas Community College, stands to lose about $430,000 from its budget if a 2-4 percent cut to higher education funding goes through. The cut has been proposed as one way to reduce spending in the wake of Brownback’s income tax cuts. If the funding is cut, the college may have to increase tuition on top of the $6 per credit hour increase this past semester. Yet many of the students are young and some are unemployed, making it difficult for them to shoulder more costs, a school official said.

6. Public education: Education spending is predicted to drop $216 per student after the tax cuts Brownback signed into law on top of a $745 decline between 2008 and 2013. Yet a state court ruled that the state is short changing students and must restore $440 million in education spending. While $1 million is just a drop in that bucket, it could go toward ensuring that Kansas’s children get the well-funded education that they deserve.

Kansas is spending a large amount of money defending its anti-abortion laws, but it’s far from the only state doing so. North Dakota has signed the most stringent abortion restrictions in the nation into law, leading the attorney general to request a budget increase of $400,000 to defend them from lawsuits. Arkansas is also gearing up to spend state money defending its new ban on abortions after 12 weeks. At a time when many states have been grappling with tight budgets, the sums of money spent on defending against lawsuits could be used elsewhere.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R), like Republican governors all across the country, aims to implement a regressive tax plan that involves cutting income taxes for the rich while, in his case, maintaining a sales tax hike that primarily hurts the poor. The sales tax increase was supposed to be temporary when it was adopted in 2010, but Brownback now wants to make permanent.

Sales taxes disproportionately impact the poor, who are more likely to spend all or most of their income. According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Brownback’s plan will raise taxes on the poorest Kansans, but still lose hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue due to huge tax cuts for the rich:

– The poorest 20 percent of Kansas taxpayers would pay 0.2 percent more of their income in taxes each year, or an average increase of $22.

– The middle 20 percent of Kansas taxpayers would pay 0.2 percent less of their income in taxes each year, or an average cut of $104.

– Upper-income families, by contrast, reap the greatest benefit with the richest one percent of Kansans, those with an average income of over a million dollars, saving an average of $6,528 a year.

The plan would cost the state $340 million in revenue, despite hiking taxes the poor. And Kansas already has a regressive tax system, with the poorest residents paying a rate more than twice as high as the richest 1 percent.

The poorest Americans are subject to a tax rate at the state and local level that is twice as high as the tax rate paid by the wealthiest earners thanks to “fundamentally unfair” state tax laws, according to a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). Middle-class taxpayers also pay higher effective rates than the wealthy.

When state, local, property, and sales taxes are taken into account, the poorest 20 percent of Americans pay an average effective tax rate of 11.1 percent, the report found. The middle 20 percent pays a 9.4 percent rate, while the rate for the top 1 percent is just 5.6 percent. The lack of progressive income taxes and an over-reliance on consumption taxes are the primary culprit, the report says.

In the 10 most regressive states, the poorest 20 percent pay a rate as much as six times as high as the rate for the richest 1 percent. Four of those states — Washington, Texas, Florida, and South Dakota — have no income tax; one, Tennessee, has a limited income tax that only applies to dividends and interest. In these five states, half to two-thirds of revenue comes from sales and excise taxes, well above the national average of one-third.

Still, Republicans across the country are pushing tax plans that would replace income taxes — typically the only form of progressive taxation at the state level — with sales taxes. Republicans in Nebraska, Kansas, North Carolina, and Louisiana have advanced such plans, even though their state tax systems are already regressive.

In Louisiana, worst of the four, the poorest 20 percent pay 9.2 percent of their income in sales taxes, while the wealthiest 1 percent pay just 1.3 percent. Even in North Carolina, the best of the four, the poor pay six times as much of their income in sales taxes as the richest one percent. Shifting to a tax code that relies solely on sales taxes would make these states even worse.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) became the latest Republican to propose the elimination of state income taxes during his State of the State address last night, adding that he would make up lost revenue by maintaining what was supposed to be a temporary increase in the state’s sales tax. Republican governors in Louisiana and Nebraska, along with GOP lawmakers in North Carolina, have also proposed replacing their state’s income taxes with increased sales taxes, a regressive plan that will raise taxes on the poor while cutting them for the wealthy.

Brownback proposed an initial cut to the state income tax, which he wants to eventually eliminate altogether, the Kansas City Star reports:

Amid the depths of the recession, legislators approved a 1-cent increase in the state sales tax in 2010. That was to be a temporary boost, with six-tenths of a cent scheduled to go away this summer on the expectation that other revenue would trickle in with an improving economy.

Now Brownback suggests rethinking the sales-tax rollback.

He wants to use it as a lever to further reduce income tax rates, piling on more cuts to those passed by the Legislature last year. Brownback wants to lower the rate in the highest income tax bracket to 3.5 percent from 4.9 percent. The rate for the lowest bracket would drop to 1.9 percent from 3 percent.

In 2012, Brownback signed a massive tax cut for the wealthy into law over the objections of Democrats and even some Republicans. That plan, which initially included provisions that would hammer the poor, would reduce state revenues by $800 million by 2014, according to the Kansas Legislative Research Department, and would likely lead to rollbacks in funding for schools and other vital programs. The plan made Kansas’ already-regressive tax code — the poorest 20 percent pay 9 percent of their income in taxes compared to less than 6 percent for the top 1 percent of earners — even more regressive. This proposal would make it even worse.

Replacing income taxes with sales taxes has become a cause du jour of Republican governors and state legislators, who are being urged to take such action by groups like Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and Americans for Prosperity, the anti-tax group founded by the Koch brothers. In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R) plan would give the wealthy a tax cut while raising taxes on the bottom 80 percent of residents, while in Nebraska, the plan could mean a tax cut for the rich at the expense of tax breaks that benefit the poor.

Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) recently signed into law massively regressive tax cuts that were so huge that many Republicans in the state opposed them. Budget analysts have found that Kansas will have to gut important public services for low-income Kansans and their children in order to pay for the tax cuts.

But Brownback has a plan if Kansas residents start to complain about the impact of those budget cuts — blame Europe:

Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration already has developed talking points to deflect anticipated criticism of the newly enacted massive income tax cuts should Kansas face significant budget problems next year. [...]

The administration is fashioning a narrative that suggests budget cuts may be necessary because the nation’s economy may remain stagnant. Europe’s financial crisis also looms as a potential threat.

“There are forces beyond the state’s control,” Brownback spokeswoman Sherriene Jones-Sontag said last week. “There’s still a great deal of uncertainty with the economy.”

Citizens for Tax Justice reacted to the governor’s plan by saying, “looks like the ‘spin room’ in Topeka has been busy lately.” After all, no one (and particularly no one in Europe) forced Brownback to sign a huge tax cut. Brownback justified the move by saying it would boost the Kansas economy, though there is scant evidence to back up that assertion.

Under Brownback’s plan, the richest Kansans will receive tax breaks worth about $20,000, while the poorest residents will actually see their taxes go up due to the elimination of tax credits that aid the poor.

The tax cut package recently passed by Kansas Republicans and signed into law by Gov. Sam Brownback (R) will lower taxes for the rich while creating a budget shortfall that will harm poor Kansans and children, according to a local advocacy group’s latest report.

Kansas Action For Children said the $2.5 billion shortfall caused by Brownback’s tax cut plan, which was too radical even for some members of his own party, will cause cuts to “core services” that help the poor and children, even as Brownback insists it won’t, the Lawrence Journal World reports:

Kansas Action for Children stated the cuts will reduce revenues for necessary state services, increase taxes on the lowest-income Kansans, and incent businesses to reorganize to avoid paying state income taxes.

“Ultimately, the package of tax changes enacted by lawmakers will negatively impact Kansas children and families in a number of ways,” the group said in its report. [...]

The group notes that legislative staff have said the state budget will face a cumulative $2.5 billion shortfall of revenue, equal to 37.4 percent of the state general fund budget. Brownback has said “core services” will be protected but Kansas Action for Children said “it is difficult to envision a scenario where core services are not negatively impacted.”

Brownback’s plan eliminated a food tax break for low-income Kansans and other tax credits that benefit children and the poor, all to give the wealthiest Kansans more than $20,000 per year in tax breaks. Taxes on the poorest residents will go up nearly $150 a year, according to the Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The plan is likely to cause cuts to education and other social services that help the poor, even though Brownback and the Republicans who voted for it insist it will actually stimulate the economy and drive job growth. That is unlikely though, as another study published this week found that high-income tax cuts don’t stimulate the economy.

The Romney campaign has been running a series of blatantly false ads claiming that the Obama administration has waived work requirements included in the 1996 welfare reform law. Everyone from independent fact-checkers to major newspapers to President Bill Clinton (who signed the law) have said that the campaign’s attack is untrue.

Last night, however, failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum once again made the false claim, saying “this summer [Obama] showed us once again he believes in government handouts and dependency by waving the work requirement for welfare.” But evidently not every member of the Republican party received the memo about how to characterize what the administration did. When asked Wednesday morning whether the welfare claim is a lie, Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) replied, “as far as I have seen”:

JANSING: But you agree that these claims that the work requirement has been abolished are false?

BROWNBACK: As far as I have seen, but I don’t know all of the basis to it. I do know the basis to this dependency on the government and how big the government is and how big the entitlement state is and how much of a debt we’re leaving to our kids.

Watch it:

All the administration’s welfare waivers would do is empower states to innovate with new work strategies. The directive from the administration reads, “The Secretary [of Health and Human Services] is only interested in approving waivers if the state can explain in a compelling fashion why the proposed approach may be a more efficient or effective means to promote employment entry.”

Yesterday, the Romney campaign’s political director laughed off a question about the false welfare ads, saying, “I think reasonable people can have a disagreement over this.”

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) in January proposed a tax cut he said would give the state a “fairer, flatter, simpler” tax code, even though it raised taxes on the poor to help pay for a massive tax cut for the top one percent of state residents. Tuesday, Brownback signed an even bigger package into law, even as the state Senate’s top Republican and a host of other conservative lawmakers urged him not to.

The new package, largely backed by Tea Party-affiliated state legislators, abandoned some of Brownback’s proposals that would have hit the poor the hardest, though some still remain. But it will force lawmakers to make even deeper cuts to education and other programs to make up a growing budget gap, the Wall Street Journal reports:

The tax plan, which was the subject of weeks of intense debate and political maneuvering in the legislature, will reduce the top individual state income-tax rate to 4.9% from 6.45% in 2013. It also will eliminate income taxes on non-wage income for about 191,000 small businesses.

The plan likely would require additional cuts in spending on education and social services to cover a reduction in annual tax revenue projected by the Kansas Legislative Research Department to exceed $800 million by 2014, or 12.8% of projected state revenues.

“It is not good public policy,” state Sen. Steve Morris (R), the president of the state Senate, said of the legislation. Other Republicans agreed, including a group of 50 former Kansas Republican lawmakers who attempted to persuade Brownback to veto the bill. “I think Kansas taxpayers need to be asking where the governor would make these cuts,” said Rochelle Chronister, who formerly served as a state representative and as the president of the state GOP, said earlier this month.

Kansas’ tax code is already regressive, as the poorest 20 percent of Kansans paying more than 9 percent of their income in taxes, while the richest 1 percent pay less than 6 percent of theirs. Now, it is even more regressive, and on top of that, poor and middle class Kansans will have to deal with spending cuts that hit social programs on which they depend.