Tope­ka, the state cap­i­tal of Kansas, is fer­tile ground for rad­i­cal, faith-based exper­i­ments. In the ear­ly 1900s, it was the site of a small Bible school that asked stu­dents to for­sake all for intense ses­sions of prayer, Bible study and speak­ing in tongues. That school was the soil in which Pen­te­costal­ism ger­mi­nat­ed and became one of the fastest-grow­ing faith tra­di­tions in the mod­ern world.

"The most important lesson of Kansas might not be the one we already knew, which is that Republican economic policies are devastating and fraudulent. It’s that we need a better way to explain an alternative path—a new story to make our case for a better world."

Repub­li­cans have staged their own faith-based exper­i­ment in Kansas over the past few years. But things haven’t turned out so well. When the gov­er­nor, Sam Brown­back, took office in 2011, he and the GOP-con­trolled leg­is­la­ture believed that cut­ting tax­es would ignite eco­nom­ic growth by attract­ing more peo­ple and busi­ness­es. The fail­ure of this exper­i­ment was pre­dictable, since cut­ting tax­es doesn’t lead to growth. It just leads to less rev­enue. And the fail­ures have been well doc­u­ment­ed. But unless you’ve been fol­low­ing Kansas pol­i­tics the past few months, you have no idea how bad things are about to get. Brownback’s approval rat­ing, which hov­ers in the 20s and is the worst among gov­er­nors in the nation, is like­ly to sink even low­er as a fis­cal apoc­a­lypse descends on the state.

Between now and the close of the fis­cal year on June 30, Kansas faces a bud­get short­fall of about $350 mil­lion. Tax­es can’t be raised quick­ly enough to meet the gap. And any­way, Brown­back has his­tor­i­cal­ly been opposed to rais­ing them. What is be done?

“ It’s going to be ugly”

Mar­tin Hawver, a long­time observ­er of Kansas pol­i­tics, has been grap­pling with that ques­tion in the col­umn he writes. Hawver notes that more cuts to the state’s road-main­te­nance pro­gram are like­ly, but that’s the easy call. The rest of the cuts?

“It’s going to be ugly; there are ser­vices that Kansans just don’t want to do with­out,” Hawver writes. ​“There are the poor to be assist­ed, the ill to be treat­ed, the chil­dren to be educated.”

Basic ser­vices to these groups will be gut­ted to pay for poli­cies that blew a hole in the bud­get. That out­come has been cer­tain since 2011, when Brown­back took office and turned Kansas into a lab­o­ra­to­ry for test­ing the GOP’s faith-based eco­nom­ics. Specif­i­cal­ly, he pushed for a low­er per­son­al income tax rate, which he got: it’s now 4.6 per­cent, ver­sus 6.45 per­cent when he took office. He also suc­cess­ful­ly pushed for exempt­ing some 330,000 busi­ness­es from the income tax.

These tax cuts, cou­pled with dis­in­vest­ment in pub­lic insti­tu­tions and ser­vices, have sent Kansas into an eco­nom­ic tail­spin, which is why the bud­get hole is huge and grow­ing. A report released in ear­ly Decem­ber by the non­par­ti­san Kansas Leg­isla­tive Research Depart­ment not­ed that the esti­mat­ed 2016 growth of the gross state prod­uct ​“has been reduced to zero per­cent from the pre­vi­ous esti­mate of 2.0 per­cent.” And the sto­ry is the same across the econ­o­my. From Sep­tem­ber 2015 to Sep­tem­ber 2016, the labor force in Kansas decreased by 1 per­cent, while the U.S. labor force increased by 1.9 per­cent. Real week­ly earn­ings increased nation­al­ly by 1.4 per­cent, while they fell in Kansas by .8 percent.

Hide the evidence

Facts may have lim­it­ed pow­er to move pub­lic opin­ion, or hold politi­cians account­able, in this post-truth era. But Brown­back once had so much faith in his agen­da that he embraced the idea of mea­sur­ing it against data. Soon after he took office, he set up a coun­cil respon­si­ble for eval­u­at­ing the state’s eco­nom­ic poli­cies. One of its chief tasks was to pub­lish a quar­ter­ly report that mea­sured Kansas against the nation­al and region­al economies.

The reports were pub­lished online until Brownback’s reelec­tion cam­paign in 2014. A copy of each report was still made avail­able upon request after that until what turned out to be the final edi­tion in May. The coun­cil announced this fall that the quar­ter­ly report cards had been axed.

“A lot of peo­ple were con­fused by them,” a spokes­woman for the Kansas Depart­ment of Com­merce, Nicole Ran­dall, report­ed­ly said.

But the reports weren’t con­fus­ing. They were very clear. They told the sto­ry of eco­nom­ic poli­cies that have method­i­cal­ly hol­lowed out Kansas and deliv­ered exact­ly the oppo­site of what the gov­er­nor promised. Those faith-based eco­nom­ic poli­cies have been GOP ortho­doxy for near­ly four decades now, and they are large­ly the poli­cies and pri­or­i­ties of the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion. Under Don­ald Trump, they’ll have the same pre­dictable results: greater inequal­i­ty, big­ger deficits and a with­er­ing of pub­lic insti­tu­tions and of the state’s eco­nom­ic infrastructure.

The GOP’s suc­cess in Kansas, as else­where, hasn’t been in gov­er­nance but in telling a sto­ry, spin­ning a fable. Its plot is this: there is a mag­i­cal road to rich­es that requires none of the hard work or sac­ri­fice of actu­al­ly invest­ing in peo­ple and cre­at­ing bet­ter, more demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions. It’s a mat­ter of cut­ting their tax­es, get­ting out of their way and let­ting the free mar­ket work its mag­ic. Peo­ple believe this sto­ry because it’s convenient.

Faith in the sto­ry should be shat­tered by the Kansas exper­i­ment — but won’t be. Even so, pro­gres­sives and Democ­rats must keep point­ing out what the GOP has done to the state. But along with the cri­tique and the crit­i­cism, we need to ask, in this moment of reck­on­ing at the out­set of the Trump era: What is the pro­gres­sive nar­ra­tive about how pos­i­tive change hap­pens? What is the answer to the destruc­tive yet pow­er­ful­ly allur­ing GOP fable of tax cuts and free markets?

The most impor­tant les­son of Kansas might not be the one we already knew, which is that Repub­li­can eco­nom­ic poli­cies are dev­as­tat­ing and fraud­u­lent. It’s that we need a bet­ter way to explain an alter­na­tive path — a new sto­ry to make our case for a bet­ter world.