Kansas governor Sam Brownback’s fiscal experiment has brought so many unprecedented changes and impacts to the state budget that it’s earned its own designation among other states—even conservative states—seeking similar tax-cutting proposals: “the Kansas Effect.”

It is not an endearing term, said Duane Goossen.

“As other states are considering different kinds of tax policies, they ask how they compare to Kansas,” he said. “They then take very deliberate steps to not do what Kansas did.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, major news media outlets in the United States and abroad have written a great deal about the state’s budget and financial outlook, he added, and little of it is good. “They’re now watching to see what happens when a state goes clear over to the edge like Kansas has.”

Goossen, Kansas Center for Economic Growth Senior Fellow, seven-term member of the Kansas House of Representatives and former budget director for 12 years under three governors, addressed members of the Kansas Farmers Union during their annual convention in Topeka in mid-December. Kansas, he said, is now in a uniquely precarious position.

“If we were to array all of the states in the U.S. on a spectrum based on how they’re handling their finances, and based on the states’ financial health, you’d find Kansas way over on one end of the spectrum, because we’re broke,” he said. “We’re not taking in enough money to pay for even a very conservative set of expenses. We have become, in fact, a bit of a spectacle to the rest of the nation.”

The implications are far-reaching and severe for all portions of the state, he warned, but rural communities will be affected the hardest.