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TomCADem

(17,378 posts)
Tue Oct 25, 2016, 10:02 PM Oct 2016

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s trickle-down economics experiment is so bad the state stopped reporting

Trump's scandals are grabbing all the air time, but what is ignored is a tax plan that would make Sam Brownback proud.

http://www.salon.com/2016/10/25/kansas-gov-sam-brownbacks-trickle-down-economics-experiment-is-so-bad-the-state-stopped-reporting-on-it/

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, the Republican responsible for the state’s business-friendly tax policies, is now trying to erase any evidence of just how wildly unsuccessful his Reaganomics experiment has proved.

Last month the state’s Council of Economic Advisors, which Brownback created in 2011 and still chairs, quietly discontinued quarterly reports originally intended to showcase the state’s rapid economic growth. (During Brownback’s re-election campaign in 2014, the reports were scrubbed from the internet and subsequently available only upon request.)

The council issued what ended up being its last report in May.

Brownback “specifically asked the council to hold him accountable through rigorous performance metrics,” Heidi Holliday, executive director of the Kansas Center for Economic Growth, told The Topeka Capital-Journal. “Five years later, the metrics clearly show his tax experiment has failed while business leaders and local chambers of commerce across the state openly ask him to change course.”

* * *
Brownback ran for governor in 2010 on an archaic small-state economic platform that promised widespread tax cuts for business owners and high-income earners. These cuts — amounting cents on the dollar, essentially, for individuals — went into effect in 2012, and subsequent years of revenue losses have gutted public infrastructure and diminished quality of life in the state.

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bhikkhu

(10,708 posts)
1. Absolutely to be expected, and this is what trump wants to do with the country
Tue Oct 25, 2016, 10:07 PM
Oct 2016

Anyone who paid attention to the effects of reaganomics, and how the later bush tax cuts worked, should be completely unsurprised. Big giveaway to the rich, then hide the data and change the subject - wash, rinse and repeat.

Cresent City Kid

(1,621 posts)
2. Trickle Down can only be sold to voters under the impression that it's never been tried.
Tue Oct 25, 2016, 10:22 PM
Oct 2016

The longest dose of it nationally had to be under GW Bush. Reagan talked it up but got antsy when the deficit ballooned and raised taxes a little. Not enough to stave off the recession in the early 90's but he did water it down a bit. GW was all in, deficits be damned, and voila, Great Recession of 2008.

The problem with the "theory" is that it can't be applied long enough to test because it destroys the economy it claims to save. I hate that people have to be the guinea pigs there.

gratuitous

(82,849 posts)
4. If the people of Kansas don't like it, there's something they can do about it
Tue Oct 25, 2016, 11:03 PM
Oct 2016

Otherwise, we have to believe that they really like being lied to by their elected officials while their state slowly shrivels up.

rustysgurl

(1,040 posts)
5. As a Kansas Democrat ...
Tue Oct 25, 2016, 11:28 PM
Oct 2016

...I can tell you that there are more than a few of us who don't like what's going on. We voted against Brownback the first time he ran AND when he ran for re-election (don't ask me how he won that year). It's really hard to run up against the Koch Machine is the only explanation I can give. We are currently in a fight to knock Kevin Yoder (R) out of Congress in our district -- he who helped devise the huge educational budget cuts which devastated our schools. Still, there are enough stupid people in our district who think the status quo is just fine and dandy.

Heavy sigh.

StevieM

(10,499 posts)
10. Republicans won big in 2014 by scaring the hell out of people that Obama was going to let Ebola
Tue Oct 25, 2016, 11:59 PM
Oct 2016

into the United States.

 

rusty quoin

(6,133 posts)
6. The thing still true about Kansas,
Tue Oct 25, 2016, 11:30 PM
Oct 2016

You can drive I-70 and almost fall asleep because it is so perfectly straight, and level, without bumps, and you can see long range without any surprises.

Oh, that's federal money, isn't it?

 

Akamai

(1,779 posts)
7. Yup! According to Thom Hartmann, Brownback ordered a series of studies
Tue Oct 25, 2016, 11:34 PM
Oct 2016

to show how wonderful his trickle down, slash taxes on the rich approach was being so successful.

Spoiler alert -- it was horrible, schools don't have enough money, the state of Kansas is having runaway deficits and now Sam Brownback wants to recall and destroy all the state reports showing how awful Brownback's stupid ideas have been to the citizens of Kansas. But the way, these are also the same ideas that Speaker Paul Ryan is touting.

TomCADem

(17,378 posts)
11. WSJ - Party Eyes 'Red-State Model' to Drive Republican Revival
Wed Oct 26, 2016, 01:32 AM
Oct 2016

It is amazing how when Brownback first implemented this, he was hailed as providing a red-state model for the Nation to follow.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324761004578281932072421560

TOPEKA, Kan.—Even if he doesn't enter the race himself, this state's Republican governor, Sam Brownback, is determined to play a starring role in the next presidential election.

How? By turning Kansas into what he calls Exhibit A for how sharp cuts in taxes and government spending can generate jobs, wean residents off public aid and spur economic growth.

"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,' " Mr. Brownback said in a recent interview.

Coming off the largest tax cut in state history on Jan. 1, Kansas is now on the leading edge of a growing but still largely untested quest among conservative governors to create growth by dramatically revamping state tax codes.


 

Akamai

(1,779 posts)
12. Thanks for posting this! The New York Times had a story about 8 months ago
Wed Oct 26, 2016, 08:25 AM
Oct 2016

about Kansas's incredible debt condition and interviewed friends and for of Brownback.

The article you cited is very interesting!

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