Todd Tiahrt wants to unbalance Kansas’ budget

Kansas Congressman Todd Tiahrt and his perfectly coiffed hair want to repeal the federal economic stimulus plan. Last week, Tiahrt started running TV commercials (did you know he’s running for U.S. Senate?) saying so. We’ve mentioned that maybe Tiahrt would like to try to balance Kansas’ budget without those funds, which got us thinking: How hard would it have been without the money? So we called Kansas state Sen. Kelly Kultala, who worked on the budget.

“There’s no way that we could have balanced the budget without that

stimulus money,” Kultala said. “We would have had have been completely

shutting down or terminating services or raising taxes. And I didn’t

see anyone interested in raising taxes.

“I don’t know what we would have done without it,” she added. “We

were greatly in need, and next year is going to be tough also — or the

2011 budget will be tough. We won’t have as much stimulus money coming

in, but we’ll have some. So thank heavens.”

Kultala estimated that the state of Kansas used around $640 million from the stimulus. Large chunks of that money helped pay for transportation projects, unemployment benefits and Medicaid.