With the nearly one billion dollar budget deficit and talk of sending Guantanamo detainees to Fort Leavenworth, political junkies here in Kansas have no shortage of things to talk about. Icaught up with both a conservative blogger and a liberal blogger to get their take on the main political issues affecting Kansas today.

The Budget:

“The problem is not a budget problem it's a spending problem. 4 of the last five years, the budget grew 8 percent each year and the inflation rate was around 3 or 4 percent each year. Government has grown too much. It's a problem of liberal republicans every year join with democrats to pass a budget and Sebelius has signed it,” Conservative blogger Benjamin Hodge said.

”The republican proposal that made it through committee that then failed in the senate was nothing other than an attempt to punish the governor and public schools. Takng a sledgehammer or a chainsaw across the top of the budget isn’t the way to solve a problem that really requires precision and precise cuts,” Liberal blogger Jason Croucher said.

The Stimlus Package:

“Its really unfortunate that every single republican including our republicans from Kansas voted against a package that its only objective is to put Americans and Kansans back to work. If it had failed on the votes of Lynn Jenkins and the rest of our delegation, we would, the state of Kansas would lose 1.2 billion dollars as the state budget is struggling to make ends meet,” Croucher said.

“Its not a stimulus packages it's a reelection package. The democrats want to buy the reelection off of our children and grand children. The money is not there and all economic evidence shows that the federal government cannot boost the economy. Every problem in today's society is either caused by or made worse by too much government,” Hodge said.

Guantanamo Bay:

“Im very pleased that president Obama, one of his first acts was to get Guantanamo bay closed. Its an international embarrassment and a black eye on the United States. Lynn Jenkins and Sam Brownback are trying very hard to make us afraid of these people coming to Kansas. That's exactly what the terrorists want, they want us to be scared, Im not scared and there is no reason to be scared,” Croucher said.

”As Pat Roberts has said, these are the worst of the worst. They are very, very dangerous people and so anytime you have very dangerous people and you have a choice to keep them far away from your home or close to your home, why not keep them as far away as possible,” Hodge said.

Energy:

“What Sebelius did, it was illegal. She had no authority under Kansas law to close the coal plant based on CO2. She was the first American policymaker anywhere in the nation, no federal or state lawmaker ever single handedly blocked the construction of a coal plant based on CO2. She is very much a radical and this was one of the things she does that I think will be infamous for her and it is making the economy worse right now,” Hodge said.

”We do not need to invest our time and our energy in those kinds of power plants when we have an alternative. Kathleen Sebelius is right when she says that Kansas can be the Saudi Arabia of wind. We need to invest our money in that.”

Reporter: Mari Fagel