Over the course of 12 debates, the Republican presidential candidates were never asked to address the budget problems in Kansas. That may not sound like an odd omission but it is…. In 2010, the tea-party wave put Sam Brownback into the Sunflower State’s governor’s mansion and Republican majorities in both houses of its legislature. Together, they implemented the conservative movement’s blueprint for Utopia: They passed massive tax breaks for the wealthy and repealed all income taxes on more than 100,000 businesses. They tightened welfare requirements, privatized the delivery of Medicaid, cut $200 million from the education budget, eliminated four state agencies and 2,000 government employees…. As you’ve probably guessed, that model collapsed. Like the budget plans of every Republican presidential candidate, Brownback’s “real live experiment” proceeded from the hypothesis that tax cuts for the wealthy are such a boon to economic growth, they actually end up paying for themselves (so long as you kick the undeserving poor out of their welfare hammocks).
It would be difficult to underestimate the devastation the Tea Party (personified by Gov. Sam Brownback) has visited upon Kansas. While selling Kansans on his vision of a Conservative utopia in which government would work better if businesses and the wealthy were taxed less, no one called him on the reality that his math didn’t add up; not even close. Rather than insist that Brownback show his work, voters drank the KoolAid…and are paying the price for their failure to kick the tires and look under the hood.
The Far Right-wing Kansas Policy Institute predicted that Gov. Brownback’s 2013 tax plan would generate $323 million in new revenue. To call that figure overly optimistic would be something of an understatement- “dishonest and disingenuous” might be more accurate. The plan resulted in a loss of $688 million. Turns out that you really can’t generate more from less, that two plus two still equals four- but when you’re wedded to your talking points to the exclusion of mathematical reality, what you have is a recipe for disaster. Sadly, disaster is exactly what Gov. Brownback has visited upon Kansas.
When you’re selling smoke and mirrors to villagers, no one should claim to be surprised when the village burns.
There’s a reason Sam Brownback is considered by many to be “America’s Worst Governor.” By any objective measure, Brownback most certainly is- and an argument could be made that he’s one of the worst chief executives in American history.
What sweeping tax cuts bought Kansas was lower than the national average job creation, almost nonexistent economic growth, and dramatically reduced personal income growth. Gov. Brownback promised to deliver 100,000 new jobs to Kansas during his second term; as of January the actual number is 700.
Since when is over-promising and under-delivering something to celebrate? Given that Gov. Brownback was democratically elected- twice- it would seem Kansans have exactly the quality of leadership they deserve. Brownback’s approval ratings may be in the toilet, but this one’s on Kansas voters, who elected someone without doing even a minimum of due diligence on his plans, his numbers, and his qualifications.
Accordingly, Kansas has become a laboratory for poor governance, smoke and mirrors economics, and incompetent leadership…but Brownback’s a born-again Christian, which seems to be all Kansans really cared about.
Meanwhile, revenue shortfalls have devastated the state’s public sector along with its most vulnerable citizens. Since Brownback’s inauguration, 1,414 Kansans with disabilities have been thrown off Medicaid. In 2015, six school districts in the state were forced to end their years early for lack of funding. Cuts to health and human services are expected to cause 65 preventable deaths this year in Sedgwick County alone. In February, tax receipts came in $53 million below estimates; Brownback immediately cut $17 million from the state’s university system. This data is not lost on the people of Kansas — as of November, Brownback’s approval rating was 26 percent, the lowest of any governor in the United States.
Lest anyone think I’ve forgotten about Louisiana, the Conservative Paradise created by former Gov. Bobby Jindal looks a lot like Kansas when it comes to over-promising and under-delivering. Gov. Jindal took perhaps the most corrupt, inept, and inefficient state government in America…and managed to booger things up even more. I would’ve thought an impossible prospect, but Jindal proved me wrong. WAY wrong.
When Bobby Jindal moved into the governor’s mansion in 2008, he inherited a $1 billion surplus. When he moved out last year, Louisiana faced a $1.6 billion projected deficit. Part of that budgetary collapse can be put on the past year’s plummeting oil prices. The rest should be placed on Jindal passing the largest tax cut in the state’s history and then refusing to reverse course when the state’s biggest industry started tanking. Jindal’s giveaway to the wealthiest citizens in the country’s second-poorest state cost Louisiana roughly $800 million every year. To make up that gap, Jindal slashed social services, raided the state’s rainy-day funds, and papered over the rest with reckless borrowing. Today, the state is scrambling to resolve a $940 million budget gap for this fiscal year, with a $2 billion shortfall projected for 2017…. Louisiana can no longer afford to provide public defenders for all its criminal defendants. Its Department of Children and Family Services may soon be unable to investigate every reported instance of child abuse. Education funding is down 44 percent since Jindal took office. The state’s hospitals are likely to see at least $64 million in funding cuts this year. \
So let me see if I have this straight. Jindal’s giveaway to the wealthiest Louisiana residents resulted in massive cuts to social services, health care, education, and legal services. It depleted the state’s rainy-day fund, and the borrowing used to camouflage the damage only amplified the problems.
Jindal came into office with a $1 BILLION surplus; eight years later he moved out of the Governor’s mansion in Baton Rouge, leaving Louisiana with a $1.6 billion deficit. That sort of staggering ineptitude is almost impossible to comprehend- a $2.6 billion swing in eight years. Breathtaking doesn’t begin to describe the reality of the financial mismanagement Gov. Jindal is guilty of.
Think about that for a moment; in eight years, Jindal drained the state treasury of $2.6 billion. That’s a record of ineptitude and mismanagement bordering on criminal. Instead of leaving office in shame, Jindal decided it would be a GREAT idea to run for President. He wanted to bend America over the same barrel he used on Louisiana, and why not? It won him the governorship; he probably figured Americans were ready for his brand of principled leadership. Or something like that.
Jindal’s Presidential prospects flamed out early- something any lucid American should be grateful for. While he may have exited the stage, the “red state model” employed by both Jindal and Brownback are exactly what Republicans want to recreate on a national level.
Ted Cruz claims his tax plan will cost less than $1 trillion in lost revenue over the next ten years. Leaving aside the low bar the Texas senator sets for himself — my giveaway to the one percent will cost a bit less than the Iraq War! — Cruz only stays beneath $1 trillion when you employ the kind of “dynamic scoring” that has consistently underestimated the costs of tax cuts in Kansas.
When subjected to the barest minimum of scrutiny, Cruz’s numbers don’t hold up; the actual cost would be will over $3 trillion. Even worse, 44% of that lost revenue will end up in the pockets of the 1%.
Who says Republicans don’t believe in socialism? Cruz’s plan represents the worst sort of income redistribution imaginable- taking from those who have too little and giving it to those who already have more than enough.
John Kasich’s tax plan includes cutting the top marginal rate by more than ten percent along with a similar cut to the rates on capital gains and business taxes. Even considering Kasich’s appetite for Social Security cuts, his plan must rely on the same supply-side voodoo that Kansas has so thoroughly discredited. As for the most likely GOP nominee, even with dynamic scoring, his tax cuts would cost $10 trillion over the next ten years, with 40 percent of that gargantuan sum filling the pockets of Trump’s economic peers.
Republicans are chomping at the bit in eager anticipation of rolling out the “red state model” of fiscal responsibility nationwide. Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has lauded Gov. Brownback’s “results” in Kansas, saying “This is exactly the sort of thing we (Republicans) want to do here, in Washington, but can’t, at least for now.”
“Exactly the sort of thing we want to do here….” I can think of nothing that more effectively encapsulates Republican disdain for the plight of everyday Americans than Sen. McConnell’s willingness- even eagerness- to duplicate the disasters in Louisiana and Kansas.
With two states teetering on the brink of economic collapse, Republicans think it would be a GREAT idea to apply that model to the rest of the country. The sort of irresponsible magical thinking behind that sort of madness is something I find impossible to comprehend. It’s almost as if Republicans wish to deliberately steer America into the ditch if it serves their agenda; I can think of no other explanation that makes sense.
I’m not about to claim that Democrats have the perfect solution; they most certainly have significant issues of their own. Republicans? They’re just nuts- addicted to magical thinking, talking points, and the (proven to be) mistaken belief that America would be a better place if only Americans would elect Republicans.
I’d rather give a 16-year-old boy with a learner’s permits a bottle of Wild Turkey and the keys to my Tesla. At least it would be only their safety and my car at risk.
