Kansas Senate GOP Passes Resolution to Sue, Condemn Obama Over Trans Guidance, Fails to Fund Schools
One Republican Calls Supreme Court Orders to Increase School Spending ‘Turds’
Kansas Senate Republicans spent their final day of this year’s session by passing a resolution, 30-8, condemning President Obama for his administration’s guidance to schools to not discriminate against transgender students, while deciding to not act to increase funding to schools despite the state Supreme Court’s ruling last week that current levels are not just illegal, but unconstitutional. All Democrats voted against the measure.
The resolution, as NCRM reported Wednesday, was sponsored by Senate GOP President Susan Wagle (photo). It also calls on Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt to join the lawsuit filed last week by Texas, nine other states, and several other parties, that sues the Obama administration for that guidance. That lawsuit, the ACLU has stated, is illegal as states cannot sue the federal government over guidance.
Opposing the Obama administration’s guidance on transgender students, GOPÂ Senator Steve Fitzgerald demanded a “return to sanity.”
“We have to return to that civilization — western civilization, Christendom — that we were lucky enough to have inherited from our parents and our grandparents. We have a responsibility, sacred responsibility to preserve and pass it on for our children and grandchildren and we are failing, badly,” Fitzgerald lamented.
GOP Senators on Wednesday before voting on the anti-Obama resolution were belligerent towards the state Supreme Court, angered that they were being told to increase funding to schools by another branch of government. If they don’t by June 30, the Supreme Court will close the schools.
Noting the very real possibility of a “constitutional crisis that could close schools in less than a month,” The Topeka Capital-Journal reports “Senate Republicans wrangled over potential responses” to the Supreme Court’s order they allocate more funds, “but were wildly divergent. Some wanted the Legislature to promptly respond and spend an additional $40 million.”
“Others mulled open defiance of the court,” the newspaper reports, noting in a stunning act of collusion the GOP lawmakers, including Sen. Mitch Holmes, spoke “of forging an agreement with Gov. Sam Brownback to pardon anyone the Supreme Court might hold in contempt.”
“This court doesn’t have any intention of allowing this issue to be resolved,†Republican Senator Jeff Melcher told his colleagues. “They’re going to continue dropping little turds like they have at the appropriate times to do everything they can to try to discredit the Legislature.â€
Republican Senator Ty Masterson called the Supreme Court’s demand lawmakers fund schools properly, “extortion.”
The Topeka Capital-Journal Wednesday morning reported once the resolution denouncing the President passed, the Senators “adjourned immediately afterward.”
UPDATE –
Kansas Senate Democrats released this statement:Â
Senate Democrats believe taxpayer dollars have just been wasted on an election year charade over which bathroom students…
Posted by Kansas Senate Democrats on Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Â
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