If I am to believe this Politico piece, Republican Governor Sam Brownback’s massive tax cuts have been such an obvious epic fiscal disaster for the state of Kansas that other GOP governors are actually taking notice as if “evidence” has the slightest thing to do with how they arrive at their policies. If so, I guess it would be a welcome development. After all, this is a party that has almost completely forsaken the Scientific Method.
Although income taxes composed almost half of Kansas’ general fund, Brownback said the cuts would grow the economy and attract new business, so that revenue would spring back quickly, essentially paying for the cuts. He had Reagan-era tax guru Arthur Laffer at his back supporting him.
But his plan didn’t pan out. Revenues are way down, and job growth remains below the national average. His own budget director says they may have to stop some of the tax cuts from going into effect, according to a New York Times interview.
Republican tax cutters in other states want to avoid that fate.
If you read the article a little more carefully, you’ll realize that the Republicans still love their tax cuts and wish they could make tax cuts as large as Brownback’s, but they realize that there are some limits on how little revenue they can ask for, despite their remaining allegiance to the magical economic theories of Arthur Laffer.
In other words, it’s not really clear that they’ve internalized that the rhetoric (or, theory, if you want to be overly generous) is complete bullshit. It is possible to set a target for how much revenue you want and then set tax rates accordingly, but it is not possible to just slash taxes way below what you believe you’ll need and then hope for some kind of miracle to occur.
If your goal is to deceptively and without the knowledgable consent of the governed shrink the size of the government down to a size where it can be drowned in the bathtub, then disregarding math and economics can work just fine. But if you actually want your budget to work, it is a prescription for looking like an idiot and ruining the fiscal condition of your state, the country, and the people who live there.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with ideology, but any ideology that is based on illusions and sleights of hand will ultimately crack up on the rocks of reality.
