Kansas: (not) BREAKING: Sam Brownback is a hypocritical jerkface

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How Brownback Is Relying On O-Care To Close Kansas' Huge Budget Hole

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) is calling all hands on deck to fix his state's huge self-imposed budget crisis, which nearly cost him re-election this year, and the staunch conservative is now receiving an assist from an unlikely source: Obamacare.

The state's well-documented budget troubles came after Brownback's dramatic reductions in taxes since taking office in 2011. With its revenue drying up and cash reserves depleted, Kansas is staring at a $280 million hole in its $6.4 billion FY 2015 budget, which ends in June.

Brownback offered his proposal for closing that hole last week, a mixture of spending cuts and transferring funds from other parts of the budget to fill it. And second biggest of those transfers is $55 million in revenue from a Medicaid drug rebate program that was bolstered under the Affordable Care Act.

The short version then is this: Obamacare is helping Kansas address its fiscal crisis -- even if Brownback's administration seems loath to admit it.

...The Kansas Health Institute first outlined what was happening in a story last week. They noted that Kansas Budget Director Shawn Sullivan didn't credit the federal law when explaining why the state would be able to use that money to close the gap.