About a year ago, I wrote an article about Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s experiment. Brownback speculated that massive tax cuts would lead to unrivaled job growth as well as boosting government revenue. This was such a big republican experiment!
After all, tax cuts are the only thing republicans care about. Just look at President Trump’s proposed budget and healthcare. Both of them are just a massacred collection of slashed benefits and programs. Everything from healthcare for the poor to Big Bird, from bio-medical research to Meals on Wheels have been canned, to provide a tax cut. Ironically, republican politicians as well as the people who contribute to them benefit from these tax cuts. For example, our president and his family and his friends will reap a fortune from these tax cuts!
In 2010, the Tea Party made Kansas a bastion of conservative ideology. Sam Brownback was elected governor, plus Republican majorities controlled both houses. To make matters even more tantalizing for benefit crushing republicans, Kansas had some of the nation’s toughest voting requirements, making it near impossible for certain less affluent demographics to vote.
As a result, a republican nucleus was created. The most conservative law could pass. In essence, for a few years in Kansas, big business ruled. Whatever those wealthy business owners, who contributed to Kansas republican law makers, wanted. No restraint and no limits and no checks and balances! It was a conservative nirvana in Kansas. Brownback even told the Wall Street Journal:
My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, ‘See, we’ve got a different way, and it works.’
In 2012, the poorest people in Kansas paid 11.6% in taxes. Those wealthier in Kansas only had to pay 3.6%.
And now for the results! We have been waiting for a long time. Turns out, the experiment was a terrible failure.
Proponents of this middle school science experiment, were so giddy with dollar signs, they assured the public that it would generate $323 million in new local revenue by 2018.
In reality, after the first year of this experiment, Kansas was $688 million in the red!
Kansas job growth dwarfed all neighboring states.
Since Brownback was elected, 1,414 people with disabilities in Kansas were kicked off Medicaid.
Six school districts in Kansas had to close up well before summer recess as a result of a lack of funding.
Cuts to health services in Kansas are predicted to cause 65 deaths in one Kansas county alone!
For the ninth time, America has learned that trickle down economics. If I save the top 1% millions of dollars, the rest of the state won’t see it. Instead, that money will siphon off into an offshore bank account. History repeats itself, and trickle down economics does not work.
Last Tuesday, this legislation was finally laid to rest.
The Kansas state legislature on Tuesday voted to override Gov. Sam Brownback’s veto and roll back $1.2 billion of tax cuts over two years. The vote marked a bipartisan repudiation of what Brownback had described as an “experiment” in a particular brand of anti-tax fiscal conservatism. FiveThirtyEight article
Republican and democratic Kansas politicians all agreed that Brownback’s plan was a complete disaster for the state. Unanimously, they voted it away.
Here is the scary part. Donald Trump’s proposed legislation is similar to Brownback’s massive tax cuts. In fact, a few months ago, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Brownback urged Trump to mimic the massive spending and tax cuts he implemented in Kansas. It appears as if Trump listened.
While Kansas was burning as a result of Brownback’s legislation, our president was so enamored with Brownback that he appointed him to lead an advisory committee. What sort of political advise would Brownback give?
Brownback conducted an epic experiment in conservative ideology. Had the project been a success, undoubtedly republicans would have forced trickle down economics down the throats of every state in America. Had the project been a success, I wouldn’t have had a problem with that. But the project was an utter disaster, resulting in deaths and an economic wasteland. Unfortunately, republicans will ignore the devastating results, and instead, continue to push trickle down.
If you were president, and you were tasked with destroying our country, wouldn’t you do everything that Trump is doing?
