Gov. Brownback, on numerous occasions, has used a chart showing that state spending peaked at about $16 billion in 2010, the year before he took office. The actual spending that year was $14.04 billion. A $2 BILLION difference; about 14%. This is not a rounding error, it is a HUGE difference.

What is the truth? "....spending under the Brownback administration has been higher than it was under Parkinson, the opposite of what the chart showed."

Why is this a "lie", rather than just a simple "error"? Gov. Brownback, according to the Director of the Kansas Budget Division, used the correct numbers when submitting his budget to the legislature.

The Budget Director, Steve Anderson, is falling on his sword on this issue, and much in the vein of Bush's "Heckuva job Brownie", Brownback has expressed his continued "full confidence" in him. The guy that made a $2 billion error.

Because he only made one error, right? Well, maybe not:



In addition to the overall spending number, the Sunday story in The Eagle also raised questions about a separate set of numbers the governor has used in his presentations, where he says that the state’s schools lack adequate fiscal discipline.

I guess that if the numbers don't match your agenda, then just change the numbers. Its the GOP way!

The committee that has oversight on this issue doesn't meet until March 20th, but the Democrats on the committee are pissed



"“It’s gargantuan,” Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, said of the error. “I think it has a dire effect on their credibility. I feel like they’ve been fast and loose with the numbers since, well, ever since their administration started.” Hensley, a member of the Legislative Post Audit Committee that can request probes of state agencies, said he plans to request an investigation of how the error occurred and went unnoticed. " “I’ve never known of a budget director to have had to make an apology for this big of a mistake,” he said."

Ken Ciboski, a professor of political science at Wichita State University and a longtime participant in Republican politics, said he has been in contact with people around the state through social media since the story was published. “Based on what I saw, I think people had a pretty negative reaction” to the error, Ciboski said. “Very definitely I think there’s some dissatisfaction out there; especially in Johnson County, I’m hearing from people there.”

Ciboski said the numbers issue may have become a kind of focal point for more general concerns about Brownback and his plans to spur private-sector expansion and investment by cutting income taxes and reducing the size and reach of Kansas government.



The underlying issue is “When is all the great wonderful stuff that’s supposed to happen coming to fruition?” Ciboski said. “People have had some pretty grave doubts about that since the beginning.

How are the people of Kansas reacting to the news? Not well:I guess those legislators didn't pray hard enough for those “dark spiritual areas” in the state that they actually started to believe the GOP's BS.There is a great, recent diary called, "Kansas Governor Rolls the Dice" Detailing just how radical Gov. Brownback's agenda is, and how much pain it will cause the average Kansan, and there are many very legitimate concerns about whether this is a good plan for the state, and if the numbers they are using are so wildly off-base, whether the people will be given the information they need to judge whether the pain they are experiencing is actually achieving the stated goals.

Unfortunately, as KansasLib so eloquently chronicled in "Alone in Kansas", this is a state that has been captured by FAUX "News" and the NRA, and the facts no longer seem to matter.



"However he (Ciboski) said that absent a major crisis, he doesn’t see Brownback losing any elections, because of the current conservative dominance of state politics."

And just because it bears repeating (lifted from tmservo433's diary ":

Brownback Cartoon: