The Kansas Experiment

The cuts were based on model legislation published by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC),^[4][5][6][7] supported by supply-side economist Arthur Laffer,^[8] and anti-tax leader Grover Norquist.^[9] The law cut taxes by US$231 million in its first year, and cuts were projected to total US$934 million after six years,^[10] by eliminating taxes on business income for the owners of almost 200,000 businesses and cutting individual income tax rates.^[10] Brownback compared his tax policies with those of Ronald Reagan, but also described them as “a real live experiment”,^[11] and had predicted that by 2020 they would have created an additional 23,000 jobs.^[2]

However, by 2017 state revenues had fallen by hundreds of millions of dollars,^[12] causing spending on roads, bridges, and education to be slashed.^[13][14] With economic growth remaining consistently below average,^[15] the Republican Legislature of Kansas voted to roll back the cuts; although Brownback vetoed the repeal, the legislature succeeded in overriding his veto.^[16]

The Kansas experiment^[17] has also been called the “Great Kansas Tax Cut Experiment,”^[15] the “Red-state experiment,”^[18] “the tax experiment in Kansas,”^[19] and “one of the cleanest experiments for how tax cuts affect economic growth in the U.S.”^[20]

By early 2017, Kansas had “nine rounds of budget cuts over four years, three credit downgrades, missed state payments”, and what The Atlantic called “an ongoing atmosphere of fiscal crisis”.^[14] To make up the budget shortfall, lawmakers tapped into state reserves set aside for future spending, postponed construction projects and pension contributions, and cut Medicaid benefits.^[17] Since approximately half of the state’s budget went to school funding, education was particularly hard hit.^[17]

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