I was hoping someone would take a careful look at how Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s experiment in Voodoo Economics has worked out for his state, and Justin Miller at The American Prospect has granted my wish. Without getting into all the details in this piece, I want to make a more general observation. There’s a lot of value in what Brownback did to Kansas because it gives us a chance to compare what the Republicans say will happen for education, employment, economic growth, and budgeting health if they get to implement their policies and what will actually happen.
Since 2013, the national job growth rate has been 7.6 percent but it has only been 3.5 percent in Kansas. There are 34 hospitals in the state that are now at risk of going out of business. Both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s have downgraded its credit rating, increasing their cost of borrowing. Public schools are so short of money that two districts were compelled to end their year early. Brownback found himself so desperate for operating capital that he looted the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System and slashed funding for the state’s transportation system.
In short, things got so bad that the Republican-dominated legislature overrode Brownback’s veto and passed a budget that, among other things, rolled back his tax cuts and provided more funding for schools.
The Democrats should not ignore these results. They should study them and they should figure out a way to highlight them relentlessly so that as many people as possible internalize the lessons. No people should have to endure what the people of Kansas have endured if it can be avoided. Republican office seekers will continue to assure us that the best way to raise revenue is to ask for less of it and that exempting businesses and limited liability corporations from taxation will lead to job growth. They’ll continue to starve education budgets with talk about providing choice, and they won’t stop attacking Medicaid even as it results in devastation for the health care system. But we can point, in all these cases, to Sam Brownback and Kansas.
We can say that we tried all that and here is how it turned out.
In the end, it was Republican lawmakers who had seen enough and voted to override their governor’s veto. But they had to learn the hard way, and Republicans from other states and in Congress show no signs that they’re going to alter their ideology as a result of seeing it fail so spectacularly when given a real chance to succeed.
Since the GOP won’t learn, it’s up to Democrats to make sure the voters learn.
I agree whole-heartedly.
I’d like to believe this was all the fault of a delusional clown show, but I suspect it has to be explained in a wider context – like why is the whole midwest lagging so badly?
Nixon opening China and Clinton giving China most favored nation status. This devastated manufacturing. There was a brief resurgence in Illinois with “Silicon Prarie” but the H1B program devastated that.
More about what China did during the Reagan years, and the western CEOs who fell all over each other seeking that 1 billion person market. But all they had to do first was let the ordinary Chinese get some purchasing power.
In all their CEO wisdom, they did this by taking purchasing power away from US workers. But, boy howdy, did they get rich and did their corporations capital valuation grow even as they made less and less product.
They get the big bucks because they’re the smart ones, right?
Why is the midwest lagging so badly? You remember TPP, which embodied the Democratic Party’s policies? You remember the January 2010 State of the Union address? You remember that Obama promised a three year federal hiring moratorium? Were you aware that under Obama government (state and local, as well as federal) was slashed mercilessly? Did you ever hear about The Sequester? You know that the percentage of the population working is still below what it was in 2007? You realize that a large percentage of the jobs that have been created since 2009 have been lousy jobs that pay less than the jobs lost in 2008-9? And you still have to ask that question?
Yeah, I think it’s a legit question.
TPP is/was a no-op.
I’m living on one of the coasts, where there is so much traffic now you can’t move at rush hour, where real estate prices are back to 2008 levels, and the skylines of the cities are changing daily. We’re booming.
Aren’t we all living in the same country? Didn’t we all get the same 2010 SOU speech?
Up til about 2 years ago, farm product prices were at high levels – those midwestern economies were still tanking then. The price drops probably haven’t helped but ?
One thing you can see is the shift to Republican control from 2013 on everywhere in the midwest. I want to know what the whole story is. What part of this is cause and what symptom? Of what?
I have been hammering the Kansas example for quite some time, and certainly at every opportunity I get when talking to Republicans. Almost no one is aware of the extent of the damage that has been done to the state by this real world example of what happens when these policies are actually put in place. How many state legislators around the country constantly push for these very same sorts of ideas? Literally hundreds, with no idea that these ideas have been empirically proven as hollow and almost certain to fail in a disastrous way. The Tea Party is very strong here, and you could almost go down their wish list, point by point, and it would read like the Kansas experiment. Millions of these people still believe these are credible ideas. Yet, their imposition has caused serious suffering to millions of people. The facts are data are all right there, ready for perusal.
Of course, a person has to be amenable to facts and evidence to truly understand the effects of the policies. And therein lies the rub. Most of these people don’t give a shit about evidence, no matter how damningly conclusive it might be.
If only the term “Kansas Republican” could become as much a cudgel for Democrats as “San Francisco Democrat” has been for GOPers.
I wonder if Trump stumbled on his LLC tax plan from Brownback. He wants to cut it along with the corporate rate to 15%. Nice for a guy who makes a few hundred million a year. For me it just confirms that he and Brownback and the republicans in congress really don’t give a nit about jobs, or health care or the economy. It’s all about what they can pocket. How in heavens name can we put a stop to it? Far too many people in this country buy into the nonsense they sell. I could show you some on my Facebook page today.
Folks getting ready for that $700 billion dollar yellow rain.
And more to come.
Every time we point to Kansas and Brownback, they’ll point to Detroit and Kwame Kilpatrick.
Detroit was in trouble long before Kilpatrick came along. Kansas only got in trouble once Brownback became Governor.
We are all Kansans now.
This is so simple its ridiculous…
Trickle down is a con. It had to be invented because giving huge tax cuts to the wealthy few at the expense of the multitudes was never a popular idea. So people like Arthur Laffer came along and invented trickle down, e.g. if we give huge tax cuts to the wealthy, they will “invest” that money on new jobs, and the resulting economic boom would more than pay for the cuts and benefit the masses with jobs and economic expansion. Serious economists have been debunking it ever since Laffer first touted it to support trickle down under Reagan. Facts and history never validated it either. But republicans could always latch onto excuses, i.e. democrats never allowed it to be implemented, or the cuts weren’t in place long enough for the magical effect to be realized.
You tell a lie loud and long enough, people begin to believe its true. Not only did democrats begin to internalize it, and temper their policies with the tax cutting orthodoxy, e.g. decreasing the growth of government, any program must pay for itself, and even talk of “cutting entitlements” as something to “get done.” But even republicans like Brownback began to believe it. That trickle down would actually benefit the masses to some extent.
In Kansas, Brownback and the republicans had complete control, and implemented every far right policy disaster they had long since dreamed of. And the good news is they had no one to blame but themselves and made clear to anyone paying attention that we now have all the data we need to KNOW that trickle down does not work as an economic stimulus. Brownback believed the con himself and got burned by it.
Fast forward to the republican “wealthcare” bill, which is really a thinly veiled tax cut bill, and the one thing the republicans are not even bothering to use trickle down as justification for destroying healthcare for millions of people. We’re not hearing the trillions in cuts to healthcare will mean jobs, etc. And that’s because, they don’t have to. Not only have democrats never mounted effective pushback on this con, they’ve allowed themselves to be co opted to the extent that they have incorporated the phony effects of trickle down into their policies as well, for example, “indexing” social security increases in ways that would amount to cuts.
The democrats have a great opportunity to bury this bullcrap once and for all. They have the material they need from the “Kansas Experiment” to run ads to educate the voters that tax cuts benefit no one but the recipients of them. But will the do it?
The democrats have a great opportunity to bury this bullcrap once and for all. They have the material they need from the “Kansas Experiment” to run ads to educate the voters that tax cuts benefit no one but the recipients of them. But will they do it?
Why would they? Not when the likes of Joe Manchin and Gene Taylor(remember him?) are allowed in the party.
Is a progressive going to primary Joe Manchin and win West Virginia? Please stop the lazy analysis.
damn good point, I knew it but out of sight and all. needs constant hammering
Unfortunately we can’t count on the Democrats to do any such thing. It wouldn’t attract suburban Republican professionals or racist white working class voters. In 2006 the Democrats had great success with a partnership between the Blue Dogs/New Democrats/DLC and Dean’s 50 State Strategy. Since then, not so much. As soon as Obama was elected Rahm Emanuel, Tim Kaine, Chuck Schumer, Debbie Wasserman Schulz and other members of the New Democrats seized control of the Party and committed it to triangulation and bipartisanship. It took six goddam years with only one success until Obama finally started to admit the Republicans were never going to play nice with him. The current leadership of the Party still think their highest priority is to prevent anybody left of Andrew Jackson from getting on the ballot. That’s why they’re still pushing this Russia “interference” idiocy and blaming BernieBros instead of trying to find out what voters in the midwest Rust Belt/Bible Belt need. As awful as Trump is, they need to have a better program than “We’re not as bad as they are.” Trump’s failings are not a guarantee of a wave victory.
OT:
Just to note that the NC GOP Caucus in the General Assembly is trying to build a case to impeach NC Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, a Democrat.
Now, why do you think the GOP would want to impeach a Democratic Secretary of State.
I refer you to Kansas and the strange careeer of Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State, a Republican and white supremacist. And to the peculiar actions of the GOP with regard to the Voting Rights Act.
Not to mention Paul Weyrich’s speech about why Republicans lose.
“educate…”
Great idea, put it on the Dems “to do” list. How much ammo do we have at this point?
But what do we do about the fact that voters are no longer educable? Indeed, KANSANS themselves aren’t educable on their own state!
As csm notes above, the Brownbackian Repub Kansas “experiment” is unfortunately just another data point on a (by now) very, very long continuum of “conservative” policy failure. Since their policies are such obvious and open failures, that means Repubs and “conservatives” are even less likely to reexamine them, because as more contrary facts pile up, the more the “believer” digs into and clings to his mental error–including the vile Brownturd himself. And after 30+ years of “conservative” lies spread by the useless corporate media, the majority of Americans are now certain that tax cuts increase revenues, however much the evidence might say otherwise. Also, too, see climate change…
I’d love to hear the musings of a Kansas Repub or phony self-described “independent” at this point. You can bet it won’t be “We wuz wrong!”—the latest veto override notwithstanding. Wake me when a majority of Kansans think abject failure should mean loss of political power…..Red America, the land of no accountability.
I’m sorry but I just can’t resist posting this. You were a man ahead of your own time, BooMan.