Last year didn't go according to plan for Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. First, the state’s revenue collections came up far short of expectations due to huge tax cuts that he pushed through the state legislature in 2012. Those tax cuts, however, didn’t spur strong growth, as the governor projected. Then, as his policies drew national criticism, Brownback found himself in a tight reelection contest, despite Kansas' being a very conservative state.

Brownback survived, winning by less than 4 points. But now he's faced with a gaping hole in the state’s budget, thanks to his tax cuts—and his new proposal to fill that hole will hurt the poorest Kansans and undermine the state’s future.

After the 2013 fiscal year, Kansas was in good shape. It had more than $700 million in a reserve fund, equal to more than 11 percent of its spending that year ($6.1 billion). In fact, state law requires Kansas to keep its balance equal to 7.5 percent of expenses. In total that year, the budget brought in about $200 million more than the state spent.

But then the tax cuts kicked in. Revenue in the 2014 fiscal year came in $333 million below projections—and nearly $700 million below the 2013 levels. Spending fell by around $150 million, but the state still faced a deficit of $329 million. Because the reserve fund was flush with cash, Brownback and his Republican colleagues didn’t have to making drastic cuts or hike taxes to close the shortfall. They just subtracted it from the reserve fund, leaving it with just $380 million remaining.

In 2012, Brownback called his plan a “real live experiment” for conservative economic policy. So when Kansas announced those revenue numbers last summer, the national media took notice. At the New York Times, Josh Barro reported on the flaws in Kansas’s tax plan; it tried to exempt small-businesses from taxation, but in doing so, it also opened up a loophole that could allow many Kansans to avoid paying taxes. Remaining confident in the plan, Brownback's administration attributed the fiscal 2014 revenue shortfall to changes in federal tax policy that incentivized people to switch their capital gains income into 2012. If that was the case, then the revenue hole was just a temporary problem, one that would disappear in the 2015 fiscal year.