Kansas has rejected the years-long tax-cutting experiment that brought its governor, Sam Brownback, to international attention and provided a model for the Trump administration’s troubled tax plans.
In a warning shot to the Trump administration, even Brownback’s fellow Republicans voted to override his veto of a bill to reverse many of the tax cuts he championed as a way to spur entrepreneurs and the economy, but which have left the state with a $1bn hole in its budget.
Starting in 2012, Brownback’s plan has been to “march to zero” – cutting taxes wherever possible in the belief that the money Kansans saved would flow into the wider economy and drive growth. The governor was advised by Arthur Laffer, the economist who inspired Ronald Reagan’s “trickle-down” economic theory. So radical was his plan that critics called Kansas “Brownbackistan”.
State Democrats and local critics were delighted that Brownback’s plan had finally hit the rocks after earlier attempts to overrule the governor’s veto had failed. Senator Tom Holland, of Baldwin City, cheered the end of “Sam’s march-to-zero madness”.
Judith Deedy, a mother of three from Johnson County who has campaigned against the cuts she blames for an escalating crisis in the state’s school system, said she was “delighted” by the news. “It just didn’t work. This was a terrible experiment that has left our state unable to do what it is supposed to do,” she said.
Brownback’s defeat means the state will end a tax cut for limited liability companies (LLCs) and so-called pass-through businesses – which meant independent business owners and farmers would pay no state tax on the bulk, if not all, of their income. That tax plan is similar to the pillar of Trump’s tax proposal. After it was brought in, the number of LLCs in Kansas leapt from 190,000 to over 300,000 and tax revenues plummeted, but the rate of jobs growth in Kansas has lagged that of its neighbors.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/07/kansas-tax-cuts-sam-brownback-trump-plan
The conservative Republican governor still touts the income tax cuts enacted in 2012 and 2013 as pro-growth policies. But voters soured last year on the governor’s policies, ousting two dozen of his allies from the legislature and giving more power to Democrats and moderate Republicans who then backed this year’s tax increase. The legislature’s action leaves his main political legacy in tatters.
'We are a cautionary tale': Kansas feels the pain of massive Trump-style tax cuts
Read more
In a warning shot to the Trump administration, even Brownback’s fellow Republicans voted to override his veto of a bill to reverse many of the tax cuts he championed as a way to spur entrepreneurs and the economy, but which have left the state with a $1bn hole in its budget.
Starting in 2012, Brownback’s plan has been to “march to zero” – cutting taxes wherever possible in the belief that the money Kansans saved would flow into the wider economy and drive growth. The governor was advised by Arthur Laffer, the economist who inspired Ronald Reagan’s “trickle-down” economic theory. So radical was his plan that critics called Kansas “Brownbackistan”.
State Democrats and local critics were delighted that Brownback’s plan had finally hit the rocks after earlier attempts to overrule the governor’s veto had failed. Senator Tom Holland, of Baldwin City, cheered the end of “Sam’s march-to-zero madness”.
Judith Deedy, a mother of three from Johnson County who has campaigned against the cuts she blames for an escalating crisis in the state’s school system, said she was “delighted” by the news. “It just didn’t work. This was a terrible experiment that has left our state unable to do what it is supposed to do,” she said.
Brownback’s defeat means the state will end a tax cut for limited liability companies (LLCs) and so-called pass-through businesses – which meant independent business owners and farmers would pay no state tax on the bulk, if not all, of their income. That tax plan is similar to the pillar of Trump’s tax proposal. After it was brought in, the number of LLCs in Kansas leapt from 190,000 to over 300,000 and tax revenues plummeted, but the rate of jobs growth in Kansas has lagged that of its neighbors.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/07/kansas-tax-cuts-sam-brownback-trump-plan
The conservative Republican governor still touts the income tax cuts enacted in 2012 and 2013 as pro-growth policies. But voters soured last year on the governor’s policies, ousting two dozen of his allies from the legislature and giving more power to Democrats and moderate Republicans who then backed this year’s tax increase. The legislature’s action leaves his main political legacy in tatters.
'We are a cautionary tale': Kansas feels the pain of massive Trump-style tax cuts
Read more