The Republican agenda of massive tax cuts for the wealthy no matter what is leading to fiscal disaster in Kansas.
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Over at Vox Andrew Prokop had a niece piece about the looming budget catastrophe in Kansas. Simply put Republican Governor Sam Brownback pushed through a major tax cut package in 2012 that cut taxes on the wealthy and a lot of small business. This was done under the theory that low taxes would create and economic boom that would in cause a flood of new revenue that would then in turn make up for the cost of the initial tax cuts. Unfortunately a problem arose due to the fact that the boom never happened, and now Kansas is facing a flood of red ink:
Kansas is now hundreds of millions of dollars short in revenue collection, its job growth has lagged the rest of the nation, and Moody’s has cut the state’s bond rating. “Governor Brownback came in here with an agenda to reduce the size of government, reduce taxes, and create a great economic boom,” says University of Kansas professor Burdett Loomis. “Now there’s been a dramatic decline in revenues, no great increase in economic activity, and we’ve got red ink until the cows come home.”
So does that mean that taxes should always be as high as possible? No of course not. In some states it might even make sense to cut taxes now that the economy is doing better. The point is that for far too long GOP orthodoxy has treated tax cuts as a sort of panacea for all sorts of problems.
So if you have a surplus you should of course cut taxes. If you have a shortfall you should cut taxes to cause a boom to raise revenue. If people aren’t moving to your rural state with poor economic performance it’s because taxes are too high. If you have a lot of uninsured people in your state it’s because people are being taxed too much. And don’t forget: if you fall asleep during a budget meeting the first thing you should shout upon waking up is, “we need to cut taxes!”
This is policy making as adherence to an absolute ideology. And alas when politics is led by absolute ideology it generally tends to end in disaster. Which in Kansas’s case it certainly has.
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