Whatever the motive, the Kansas Senate did the right thing last week in approving a bill that would raise the state’s bottom-of-the-barrel minimum wage of $2.65 an hour to the federal level. Will the more conservative House do likewise? It certainly should. The state minimum wage may be a “phony issue,” said state Sen. Dick Kelsey, R-Goddard, because it applies to few businesses and as few as 20,000 Kansas workers. But if so, it cannot also be the socialist threat to the free market that business lobbyists have annually insisted it is. Either way, Republicans should join the effort to make $7.25 the state’s minimum.
An analysis in the Hill newspaper of next year’s blockbuster Kansas GOP primary for U.S. Senate noted that “discerning any major differences between Kansas GOP Reps. Jerry Moran and Todd Tiahrt requires a microscope.” But it observed that Moran’s conservatism has an independent streak while Tiahrt is “a hard-right” party-liner. “There’s an opinion out there that Tiahrt is a Republican’s Republican, and Moran is more driven by himself,” an unnamed state GOP operative told the newspaper.
Something to reassure Gov. Kathleen Sebelius in case she’s worried about what Kansans will think of her if she changes her mind about joining President Barack Obama’s Cabinet: 62 percent of Kansans in a SurveyUSA poll last week for KWCH, Channel 12, said she should accept a nomination to be secretary of health and human services, about the same amount who said it would either help Kansas (37 percent) or have no effect (26 percent) on the state. Asked whether she’d be a good candidate for the job, 59 percent said “yes.”
“The theater was all in their own minds and in their own making.” — Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, after the budget standoff with GOP legislative leaders
“She blinked, and that’s helpful.” — Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, R-Independence, on Sebelius’ decision to sign the budget bill
“We’ve had 113 tax cuts for business since 1987.” — Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley (in photo), D-Topeka, urging that delaying the phase-in of state tax cuts be part of the budget debate
