Kansas City News Blog

Kelly Kultala

Todd Tiahrt

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.

"Those would have all been things that would have been on the table that we would have had to cut," Kultala said. "I just think it's shortsighted to say 'you give that money back' or don't take it in the first place. The purpose was to stimulate the economy, and that's what I believe that we have used it to do.

"We didn't take the money and blow it. It was to keep people working or keep them getting services. Or if you're unemployed, you have benefits so that you can still go out and stimulate the economy to pay your bills and buy your food and stuff like that."