First and foremost is the laughingstock that extremist Republican Sam Brownback has made of Kansas. Brownback slashed social welfare spending and implemented steep regressive income tax cuts, promising that his Laffer curve-based supply-side economic experiment would bring jobs and prosperity to Kansas while increasing government revenue. In fact, the opposite has happened. Revenue projections in Kansas are in freefall, and the economic growth benefiting the rest of the country--including economically similar areas in surrounding states--has bypassed the Sunflower State. Just in the last week Kansans received another flurry of bad news: revenue projections are even worse than the disastrous figures projected last month, forcing even deeper cuts to education and other services. But that wont be possible, as a panel of judges has ruled that Kansas is already shortchanging K-12 education. In desperation, Brownback has proposed further reductions in state funding to its already woefully underfunded public employee pension system, a move that is meeting with stiff resistance even from his fellow Republicans. As a result, Kansas Republicans are confronting the previously unthinkable possibility that the tax cuts may need to be repealed. Brownbacks own budget director has said that everything is on the table, including the tax policy. It has been many years since a Republican-dominated state government has publicly considered the need to reverse course on low-tax economic policy. The failure of Brownbacks experiment is also being replicated in New Jersey, where governor Chris Christie slashed pensions, cut taxes for the rich, laid off public employees and gave away $2 billion of tax incentives, only to watch New Jersey rank next-to-last in job growth.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 08:48:06 +0000
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