Failed Kansas tax cuts should terrify Republicans writing federal tax bill There was no economic boom, just catastrophic impact on real-life budgets and services.

Stephen Henderson | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Republicans partner with Democrats to end failed 'Kansas Experiment' Kansas lawmakers overrode the governor's veto to hike taxes after massive cuts left the state unable to fund basic programs. Video provided by Newsy

Let’s start with an axiom.

Government is not an experiment.

It’s not taking place in a laboratory, under tightly controlled circumstances, where the consequences, even if they go wildly awry, can be contained to beaker or pipette.

Government is the structural expression of our public lives, outlining the way we choose — democratically — to build and protect collective goods and services. And it’s the way to decide how to care for the most vulnerable among us — people who, through lack of opportunity, poor choices or just bad luck, need government to be sure they don’t starve or go sick without care.

It matters, and the stakes require that we all take it seriously — even those among us who don’t much care for government solutions.

That’s where the State of Kansas went so terribly wrong. Gov. Sam Brownback, one of the nation’s most ideologically driven leaders, championed a “real live experiment” that he hoped would serve as a red-state model for the utter trivialization of government, its services and those who count on them. He had no data to back his idea that deep income tax cuts to individuals and businesses would unleash an economic boom that would supplant the support and even the need for government activity.

It was pure belief, born strictly of his own anti-government instincts. It was not a serious idea, even though he cowed a bunch of GOP legislators into adopting it.

And its outcomes — predictable and catastrophic — were not contained to a laboratory. They inflicted serious damage on the state’s ability to provide services — schools, social services, public safety — without running huge deficits.

Brownback had to slow the pace of his cuts to avoid disaster.

Now moderate Republicans have joined with Democrats to outright reject Brownback’s 2012 tax plan and put in place a sensible structure to produce enough revenue to keep the state afloat. Before the current package was adopted, Kansas was facing a $900-million deficit over the next two years, thanks to the tax cuts.

All of this should look eerily familiar to people here in Michigan and around the nation. Here, we’ve seen this argument emerge in our own wackadoo Legislature, where the GOP this year seriously contemplated a proposal that would have zeroed out Michigan’s income tax over time, without bothering to replace the revenue.

How would we have kept schools open, roads intact, social services functioning?

Growth!

Of course!

Except that Kansas now stands as a horrible example of how that doesn’t work out.

Gov. Rick Snyder argued when he was elected that a $1.8 billion tax cut for businesses would create enough growth to offset the loss to the treasury. Now, in year seven of his leadership, it hasn’t happened.

Yes, there has been job growth, and business receipts are up. But tax receipts keep flagging, even as Snyder refuses to reconsider his initial plan.

At the national level, President Trump is promising to take the same approach — tax cuts aimed disproportionately at the highest earners, supposedly to spur growth.

But sensible economists (and even some in the GOP) are warning about the deficits that could explode. (Didn’t Trump run explicitly against deficit growth?)

The problem with all of this is the extremity of its thinking. Rather than balancing the need to keep government whole enough to deliver services against the goal of low tax rates, it indulges the latter fully at the expense of the former.

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Circumstances don’t matter; government can just cut.

Consequences don’t matter; people can go hurting while the safety net gets shredded.

Evidence doesn’t matter; supporters of the Kansas model are still pointing to it as a win, rather than a near unmitigated disaster.

Meanwhile, in states where the conversation about taxes versus good services is more mature and not grounded in the idea of “experimentation,” outcomes are much better.

Minnesota has the fastest-growing Midwest economy and stable revenues for a state government, even though its governor, Democrat Mark Dayton, actually raised taxes on upper-income citizens and businesses a few years back.

The state is projecting a $1.65-billion surplus for the next two years. Lawmakers are contemplating tax cuts and other boon-time initiatives.

Michigan’s projections are off for the third consecutive year, and lawmakers are trying to contend with a shortfall.

Maybe we ought to stop experimenting. Maybe we could stop chasing ideological rainbows and deal with reality — both with regard to the money we need to provide services, and the consequences that could befall those who rely on those services if we come up short.

It requires a different mindset, no doubt.

But we can all see what’s happening with the reckless “experiment” in Kansas. And we should all agree — we don’t want to be like that.

Stephen Henderson is editorial page editor of The Detroit Free Press, where this column first appeared. Follow him on Twitter: @shendersonfreep

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