I don’t think the GOP is going to pick up enough to take back Congress next year, which I actually think is a very good thing. It increases the odds of Obama being Carter, not Clinton, and will force the GOP to reconsider whether it has the right leadership in place to win — it does not.

But more stories like this one mean the GOP gains in 2010 are going to be significant.

Rep. Dennis Moore (D-Kan.) is reportedly going to announce today that he won’t seek re-election, making him the first Member of Congress this cycle to announce an outright retirement from the House.

The six-term Democrat’s departure, which was reported first by the Kansas City Star Monday morning, will leave his Republican-leaning district up for grabs in 2010.

The Republicans are starting to rally across the nation for Doug Hoffman.

Congressman Todd Tiahrt of Kansas who is running for Senator there this evening announces his endorsement of Hoffman on the heels of Sarah Palin’s endorsement.

The gates are opening as a flood of conservatives and Republicans now race to Hoffman with more and more polls showing Scozzafava out of the running.

This is now a two man race between the Democrat and Doug Hoffman. Hoffman has momentum on his side. He can do it. You can help.

It seems we can’t turn on the television without seeing the bankers and politicians responsible for this economic crisis passing the blame. Harry Truman used to say, “The buck stops here.” Today, politicians pass the buck. And the bucks. A lot of bucks. And they’re taking the bucks they pass from us.

Despite their failures, the politicians in Washington, DC seem to think they have the solutions, too. Unfortunately, those solutions are familiar: If only they could spend more, tax more, regulate more, and control more of the economy, our problems will be solved.
Well, government is bigger, more intrusive and more controlling than it has ever been.

How has that worked so far?

I don’t buy it. Our nation works best when people are given more freedom, not less. We don’t need more regulations and we certainly don’t need new taxes to fix this problem.

What we need is responsibility.

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Update 3/31/09 by Jeff: Ho, hum, it appears Gov. Sebelius is yet another Obama nominee with a tax problem.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius (Democrat), fresh off a losing battle against the GOP-led state legislature to solve the state budget crisis by incurring more debt while keeping expenditures exorbitant, has been selected by President Obama to head up the department of Health and Human Services. Given the amount of time between the February 3 withdrawal of Obama’s first choice for the post, former Senator and health care rationing advocate Tom Daschle (D-SD), it certainly appears that Sebelius was a very, very distant second choice (if that) to fill the empty cabinet position.

The reason she was a distant second for the post, though, probably (based on President Obama’s track record of nominees to date) had little or nothing to do with a reluctance to nominate yet another lobbyist to his cabinet.

Before being elected state Insurance Commissioner, Sebelius was executive director and chief lobbyist for the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association (an organization which has since dropped the accurate title for the more obfuscative “Kansas Association for Justice”). She continued protecting the state Trial Lawyers Association’s interests as Governor, using her veto power in 2007 to kill SB 55, a tort reform measure aimed directly at lowering health care costs by providing partial protection to health care professionals in the wake of a state Supreme Court ruling “that physicians and other health care providers could be sued under the Kansas Consumer Protection Act for disputes over the care and treatment of patients.”

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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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Faced with a shortage of funds this year and unwilling to cut the bloated state budget, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius is planning to welsh on the state’s debt to taxpayers who overpaid in 2008 and to put a hold on paychecks owed to state employees until the Republican-controlled state legislature allows her to break state law by borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars from already  bankrupt state funds.

Breaking Borrowing Law

The Kansas Finance Council, which is made up of Sebelius and six state GOP leaders, is refusing to approve the Democratic Governor’s $225,000,000.00 borrowing plan because state law requires all such debts, called certificates of indebtedness, to be retired by the end of the fiscal year in which they were issued. Kansas’ fiscal year ends June 30, and the state has already taken out $550,000,000.00 in certificates that it likely won’t be able to repay. Approving the additional amount requested by Sebelius would push that debt total over three-quarters of a billion dollars with 4 1/2 months remaining to somehow find the money to  pay it off within the timeframe required by law.

“We cannot issue more certificates if the funds will not materialize by the end of the year,” said House Speaker Mike O’Neal (R) in a press release. “Without the revised 2009 budget bill, there is no way that we can legally issue a certificate knowing full well that the money will not be available to retire the debt.”

Governor Turns Up Nose at Real Alternatives

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