Kansas Republicans were right last week to push back on Democrats’ efforts to eliminate the “pay as you go” requirement in the state’s House of Representatives.

PAY-Go, as the Pay As You Go rule is called, was the wrong issue to test the bipartisan sentiment of the House’s new membership. The measure failed on an almost straight party-line vote. That’s as it should be. Facing a budget shortfall of nearly $1 billion in the next 18 months, the last thing the House needs to do is ease the fiscal discipline that PAY-Go requires.

“We’re broke, and there’s no possibility of finding another pot of money to add anything to a budget right now,” Rep. Don Hineman, R-Dighton, who is the new House majority leader, said in standing to oppose the measure.

The PAY-Go rule was adopted in 2011. It requires that, when a spending bill comes to the floor of the House, no amendment can be made to increase spending in one area unless it’s accompanied by a cut of equal or greater size in some other area of the bill.

Members of both parties have been frustrated by the rule, arguing that it gives lawmakers on the Appropriations Committee too much power, because the Appropriations Committee determines the upper limit of the state’s budget. Rep. Henry Helgerson, D-Wichita, offered Thursday’s amendment to end PAY-Go. He said the PAY-Go rule prevents lawmakers who are not on the Appropriations Committee from fully representing the interests of their constituents.

“PAY-Go was put in as a way of controlling the discussion on the floor,” Helgerson said. “We always balanced budgets before this, and we actually did a better job than what’s gone on in the last few years.”

PAY-Go supporters argue that the rule prevents political “gotcha” votes in which members offer amendments to add funding for politically popular programs, even though no funds are available, effectively daring the other side to vote no and provide political fodder for the next election.

Suspending PAY-Go is not the right way to start a legislative session in which the top priority is fixing the state’s badly broken budget. Hopefully Thursday’s party-line vote won’t be a harbinger of things to come and Republicans and Democrats can find common ground on other issues. Hineman sounded optimistic that they could, and that’s a good sign.

“The more important question is, will leadership allow full and open debate, and the bringing of amendments within the framework of PAY-Go, and that hasn’t always been the case in the past,” he said. “I think it will be this time.”