I previously noted how many Republican governors and state legislatures have let ideology trump sound policy in major areas like taxes, unemployment insurance and health care. Now, the chickens of those poor decisions are coming home to roost. Kansas is the poster child for cutting taxes sharply in line with recommendations of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Its calls for deep tax cuts and limits on revenues and spending reflect extreme "supply side" and anti-tax arguments that mainstream economic research discredited long ago, as my Center on Budget and Policy Priroties colleagues explain here . Now, we see that these policies have been a budgetary disaster for Kansas. So much so, my CBPP colleague Nick Johnson reports , “that leaders in Oklahoma, Nebraska, and other states are expressing concern about the Kansas results and distancing themselves — at least rhetorically — from the Kansas failures.” [ SEE : Cartoons about the Republican Party ] How badly is Kansas faring? State revenues have plummeted, employment growth continues to lag the national average, and the state’s credit rating has been downgraded . Kansas’ tax cuts this year are costing the state about 8 percent of the revenue it uses to fund schools, health care and other public services, a hit comparable to a mid-sized recession, according to this CBPP report . The revenue loss, state data show, will rise to 16 percent in five years if Kansas doesn’t reverse the tax cuts.

While most states are restoring school funding after years of significant cuts due to the recession, Kansas continues to cut (see chart). Funding for colleges and universities, libraries, local health departments and other services, which also were cut sharply, continues to fall.

The largest tax cuts went to those at the top, and Kansas actually raised taxes on the lowest-income families. Nothing in the Kansas economy’s subpar performance since these tax cuts were enacted suggests the benefits have “trickled down” to ordinary Kansans.

[GALLERY: Cartoons on the Economy]

Kansas also reduced regular state unemployment insurance benefits, but North Carolina is the poster child for cutting the program. It cut not only the maximum number of weeks of benefits but also the benefit level. That rendered North Carolina ineligible for federal emergency benefits starting in July 2013, six months before federal lawmakers let the entire federal program expire.

North Carolina lawmakers argue that by cutting jobless benefits, they generated a sharp decline in unemployment. Critics, however, note a continued slide in the labor force participation rate (the share of North Carolinians working or looking for work), suggesting that many people who lost benefits simply stopped looking for work. In fact, a careful statistical comparison of labor market trends in North Carolina and neighboring South Carolina and Virginia “does not appear to support … findings of large effects from changes in [unemployment] benefits” — other than, of course, the gratuitous hit on workers struggling to find a job and their families.

Finally, both North Carolina and Kansas are among the 24 states that have chosen not to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act — even though the federal government will pick up nearly all of the costs (100 percent for the first three years, phasing down to 90 percent in 2020 and all subsequent years). The health care law’s Medicaid expansions were intended to fill historical gaps in Medicaid eligibility for low-income adults. These states’ refusal to take the expansions leaves a coverage gap for 4.8 million uninsured adults. It also is a bad deal for the states’ health insurers.

All told, these states have enacted measures that deliver no observable economic or budget benefits while making it harder for struggling families to get ahead.

