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Lucylastic -> RE: Gov Brownback cuts funding to education (2/13/2015 5:27:20 AM)
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This from the LA times from last july
Sam Brownback, the Republican governor of Kansas, doesn't just believe in whistling past the graveyard--he's willing to stroll past it in full-throated song.
The graveyard is where the economy of Kansas has been buried since 2012, when Brownback and his Republican state legislature enacted a slew of deep tax cuts in a tea party-esque quest for economic "freedom."
Our new pro-growth tax policy will be like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy. - Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback in 2012, promising an elusive bright future
"Our new pro-growth tax policy will be like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy," he promised then. Brownback's tax consultant, the supply-side guru Art Laffer, promised Kansans that the cuts would pay for themselves in supercharged economic growth.
Instead, job growth in Kansas trails the nation. The state's rainy-day fund is dwindling to zero. Month after month, revenue comes in even lower than fiscal officials' most dire expectations.
In the rest of the country, school budgets are finally beginning to recover from the toll of the last recession; in Kansas, they're still falling. Healthcare, assistance for the poor, courts, and other state services are being eviscerated.
lRelated A fraud accusation like nothing you've seen before
Who's benefiting? The rich, including those proud offspring of Wichita, Kan.: the Koch brothers.
Despite all this, Brownback resorted to an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago to declare that "the early results are impressive." Among other statistics he cited, "In the past year, a record number of small businesses — more than 15,000 — were formed."
The toll of tax-cutting in Kansas
Who reaped the biggest benefit of Brownback's tax-cutting? Not the middle class or the schools, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. (Center for Budget and Policy Priorities)
Yes, but as shown by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington economic think tank, 16,000 disappeared. And many of those businesses that Brownback crowed about were surely created to take advantage of one of the tax-cut quirks Brownback enacted. This is the elimination of all taxes on partnerships, sole proprietorships, and LLCs that pass through their tax liabilities to their owners. That allows everyone from freelancers and petty contractors to huge partnerships to avoid any state income tax at all, as long as they're organized as a certain type of "small business."
Brownback's policy, and his claims about its outcome, define the term "ideological" -- the imposition of preconceived notions on a contradictory reality.
The record of Kansas since 2012 shows the folly of such draconian cuts in revenue. It's one thing to enact targeted cuts in tax rates during an economic upswing, when such a policy can add fuel to job generation. It's quite another to do so blindly during a slump, when cuts in state services undermine efforts at recovery.
Since Kansas enacted deep tax cuts in 2012, job growth in the state has badly lagged that of the U.S. overall -- including tax-raising California.
Brownback's tax policy came right out of the conservative playbook. His 2012 package cut the top two personal income tax rates from 6.45% (on income over $60,000) and 6.25% (on income between $30,000 and $60,000) to 4.9%. The rate on income under $30,000 was pared to 3% from 3.5%. Pass-through business income was made fully tax-exempt. The law increased the standard deduction, but also eliminated several tax credits that assisted the poor.
More tax changes were enacted last year. The top rate was cut to 3.9% in stages through 2018. But other cuts were reversed; much of a sales tax reduction was canceled, and the standard deduction was cut back, effectively raising taxes for the middle- and working-class.
In all, as the CBPP documents, the changes will cut the taxes of the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%. The poorest 20% of Kansans will see their taxes rise by 1.3%.
The impact on overall state revenue has been devastating. Despite Laffer's prediction, the state ended fiscal 2014 with a shortfall of $338 million.
Brownback continues to promise his citizens that growth is just around the corner. But there's no evidence that the kinds of cuts he promoted have anything to do with genuine economic growth. Indeed, it's likely that preserving the quality of crucial state services is more important. That's a policy pursued in California under Gov. Jerry Brown, who successfully pushed to raise taxes after the recession; the state's job growth since then has left Kansas and the country as a whole in the dust.
"States considering deep tax cuts in hopes of sparking a surge of economic growth should look carefully at Kansas," the CBPP suggested in March. Yes, look carefully -- and run the other way.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-kansas-a-smoking-ruin-20140709-column.html
This from a couple of days ago
Sam Brownback, the current Republican governor of Kansas, seems determined to repeat that tragedy as farce. As least, it would be farce if his policies weren't so destructive to the the health and welfare of the state's citizens.
This executive order was the only thing in Kansas protecting those people. - Doug Bonney, ACLU of Kansas
Brownback's latest stunt is to abolish state employees' protections against job discrimination based on sexual orientation. In an executive order Tuesday, Brownback reversed a 2007 order by his Democratic predecessor, Kathleen Sebelius, that had brought state anti-discrimination policies in line with most of corporate America and 31 other states.
The right-wing governor attempted to clothe his action in the mantle of good administrative procedure -- he said Sebelius should have acted through the legislature, rather than on her own -- but it more resembles the death rattle of public bigotry.
Brownback overturned an important anti-discrimination policy in the same week that Alabama Chief Justice Roy S. Moore defied a federal court order legalizing gay marriage in his state. These men are both on the wrong side of history, and they know it. Like King Canute trying to hold back the tide, they act in vain.
Of the two, Brownback appears to be the more cynical by far. He offers no explanation for why he needed to act on LGBT policy now, in the fifth year of his tenure as governor and following his narrow reelection victory in November. Sebelius issued her executive order eight years ago.
Brownback has a history of vindictive behavior -- remember his attempt in 2011 to intimidate and punish a high school senior for her disparaging tweet about him? To rescind out of the blue an anti-discrimination policy for Kansas citizens that has been in effect for nearly a decade is nothing short of vicious. Civil rights advocates are properly aghast.
"This executive order was the only thing in Kansas protecting those people," Doug Bonney, the ACLU of Kansas legal director, told my colleague Matt Pearce.
Possibly, Brownback is hoping to deflect attention from the disastrous condition of the Kansas state budget, which has been hollowed out by Brownback's extremely aggressive tax-cutting. Income tax receipts continue to fall below Brownback's rolling projections -- the latest estimates show them coming in 2% below forecast made just last November.
Since Kansas enacted deep tax cuts in 2012, job growth in the state has badly lagged that of the U.S. overall -- including tax-raising California.
Tax receipts for the first seven months of this fiscal year are lower by $355 million, or 11%, than they were at the same point in 2012. The consequences are dire for discretionary state programs, such as education and Medicaid, which face cuts of 30% in their budgets, according to local reports.
This wouldn't be necessary, of course, if the growth that Brownback and his advisors -- among them the notorious Arthur Laffer -- predicted would result magically from those tax cuts had come to pass.
It hasn't. As we reported last year, job growth in Brownback's Kansas lags its neighbors, the U.S. as a whole, and more fiscally intelligent states such as California. The Kansas City Star reported last month that the state's job growth had actually slowed since the 2013 enactment of Brownback's tax-cutting package, lagging that of 37 other states, including neighboring Missouri.
The economic suffering that Brownback's policies have imposed on Kansans is bad enough; to add to the pain by removing protections against workplace harassment over sexual orientation is a new low.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-the-return-of-bleeding-kansas-20150211-column.html
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