Late yesterday, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius (Democrat) succumbed to pressure and gave up on her attempt to hold state employee paychecks and taxpayer overpayment refunds hostage for $225,000,000.00 in ransom.

Sebelius’s overspending on unnecessary programs, and unwillingness to heed warnings last year from the Republican-led state legislature that a failure to trim budgetary fat would lead to a 2009 crisis, put Kansas’ state government in such a budget crunch that its only options were to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from its bloated budget or to add to the $550,000,000.00 it had already borrowed from itself in late 2008 — a total that must, by law, be repaid by the June 30 end of the 2009 fiscal year.

The Republican legislature addressed the crisis by passing a measure to cut the budget by $326,000,000.00 — around 4.25% per department, according to the Kansas City Star.

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Marred by a week-long cycle of bad press and Cabinet defections, President Obama’s $787 Billion stimulus package passed both houses of Congress last night, despite the rigid partisan-divide.

Clearly emboldened by their unanimous “No” votes on the first version, House Republicans, masterfully corralled by Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), held the line yet again. Three Senate Republicans – Arlen Spector (R-PA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Susan Collins (R-ME) – broke rank and voted for the President’s stimulus package for fear the situation would become “much worse without this bill.”

Obama’s crusade to saddle future generations of Americans with $1 trillion in debts, notwithstanding stagflation, will result in nothing more than supplementing their paychecks with a disgraceful $8 a week pat on the back.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 equals 5.7% of America’s Gross Domestic Product (GPD), whereas President Roosevelt’s New Deal, at its height of fiscally irresponsible, equaled approximately 2%. The gross spending called for by bill – mandated by Congressional Democrats and President Obama – is equal to or larger than the GDP of 157 nations – all but 14 countries listed in the International Monetary Fund’s database for 2007. Among those countries dwarfed by the unprecedented spending are United Arab Emirates, Dominican Republic, Iran, Taiwan, and Israel.

President Obama, by his own admission, owns this recovery bill, the largest of its kind in US history. “Congress has passed my economic recovery plan –- an ambitious plan at a time we badly need it,” he said in his weekly address this morning. Like FDR’s socially-transformative welfare policies, the implications of this bill’s sheer size and scope will likely not be known for several years, if not decades. But as Americans wake to the sobering reality that we’re now indebted to China, Saudi Arabia, and other hostile foreign creditors for trillions all for naught, Republicans would do well to remember just whose “economic recovery plan” this was.

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