It was five years ago that Gov. Sam Brownback proudly engineered the biggest tax cuts in the history of Kansas. He put all his political chips on the trickle-down fantasy that personal and corporate tax cuts for rich business owners would produce higher state revenues.

In the process, he made his state an experimental showcase for the driving philosophy of supply-side theorists like Paul Ryan, the House speaker, who served as a staff acolyte when Mr. Brownback was in the Senate. “See, we’ve got a different way and it works,” Mr. Brownback promised.

Er, not really. The multibillion-dollar cuts have not moved employers to invest and hire more; the state budget is now flooded with red ink. Kansans have become alarmed at years of deep deficits, shrinking state support for education, two downgrades in the state’s credit rating and enough regret among legislators to prompt an extraordinary uprising last week by Statehouse Republicans.

Braced by a dozen newly elected moderates, the Republican Legislature dared to try to reverse the governor’s course, by approving a $1 billion tax increase over two years. An aim was to kill the Brownback exemption that allowed more than 330,000 business owners to pay no state taxes at all on their income.