Sam Brownback And The Republican Legacy
You really have to admire the chutzpah of now former Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. Brownback, with the advice of the tax-cutting economist Arthur Laffer and the help of his Republican-dominated legislature, passed the largest tax cut in Kansas history back in 2013. Embracing the same principles that we see in the latest tax cut passed in Congress last month, Brownback and the Republicans promised on explosion in business and job creation and an associated increase in wages and tax receipts.
The reality, however, turned out to be far different. In the first year alone, the state’s revenues dropped by 20%, over $700 million, overwhelming the $300 million in additional revenue that Brownback had promised would be created over the next five years until 2018. Over the next few years, the Kansas economy was not the job-creating machine that Brownback had also promised. Instead, the state lagged far behind it neighbors in both job and income growth.
In the wake of this evidence, Brownback did not rethink his policies one iota, instead doubling down on his promises of a booming future just around the corner. Even so, the reality of a balanced state budget had to be dealt with. Brownback’s answer was to privatize Medicaid, throw thousands off the welfare rolls, raid the state’s transportation fund, and gut the funding for education in the state. The result was that schools in a number of school districts around the state were forced to close weeks before the end of the school year simply because they had run out of money. Eventually, the State Supreme Court weighed in and forced Brownback and the Republicans to properly and equitably fund education in the state.
Finally, even the Republicans in the legislature bailed out on Brownback and his policies, passing a massive tax increase over Brownback’s veto in 2017 in order to deal with the nearly $1 trillion deficit the state faced over the years 2017 and 2018. In addition, the legislature passed a bill to increase educational funding by around $200 million over that same two year period. That bill was signed by Brownback but rejected as insufficient by the state Supreme Court who demanded a new plan be in place by the end of June, 2018.
Brownback is term-limited and will not be able to run again this year. Instead, he was nominated to be Trump’s roving ambassador for religious freedom and was finally confirmed with Mike Pence’s tiebreaking vote this week.
But before his confirmation, Brownback was able to give his last state-of-the-state speech. With the knowledge that in a matter of days he would no longer be responsible for the disaster he had created and the looming requirements of the State Supreme Court, Brownback actually had the nerve to ask for an additional $600 million in education funding over the next five years. Unsurprisingly, he proposed no way to pay for this additional spending other than to say he would not propose any new tax increases. Of course, he won’t be proposing anything at all for Kansas any more. But it certainly takes more than a little chutzpah for Brownback to suddenly become interested in funding education considering how much his policies have decimated it in the prior five years.
This is, however, our recurring national nightmare. Ronald Reagan and the Republicans passed massive unfunded tax cuts in 1981 and it took tax increases under both Republicans and Democrats in 1986, 1990, and 1993 for the government to recover. Whereupon George W. Bush and the Republicans passed another enormous unfunded tax cut in 2001 which, along with the Great Recession, caused the debt to explode and from which we have still not fully recovered. Now Trump and the Republicans have passed another massive unfunded tax cut. Of course, that is part of the GOP strategy, to starve the government of funds to actually do its job And like Brownback and those before him, they will walk away from the disaster they have created and leave it to Democrats and the rest of us to clean up the mess. And then be ready to do it all over again.
