The "real live experiment" Gov. Sam Brownback concocted as a conservative economic blueprint for Kansas has adversely affected too many lives.

The time is now for Brownback to get real, disavow his pride and govern with common sense. Under his leadership, Kansas isn’t headed in the right direction.

This plea comes from a newspaper that endorsed Brownback’s re-election bid for governor in 2014. At that point, The Topeka Capital-Journal concluded it was too soon to declare that Brownback’s economic plan wouldn’t work.

Not anymore. Evidence is abundantly clear.

Had the governor demanded a stair-stepped tax reduction program, with smaller cuts imposed gradually, his tax revisions would have been implemented at a pace the state budget could handle. Spending could have been cut gradually to more easily match losses in revenue.

Instead, a massive decline in revenue makes it impossible to compose a stable budget. Public schools lack necessary funding. The state highway system has been robbed of funds to fix shortfalls. Public safety has even been affected with job reductions in the Kansas Highway Patrol.

Those who believe the state has a vested interest in funding university and technical colleges now watch as those institutions face cuts. Those who believe people with mental illnesses or physical disabilities deserve compassionate help are appalled by limitations imposed on services.

Yet Brownback won’t back down from his cornerstone policy, which eliminated state income taxes for 330,000 physicians, dentists, lawyers, farmers and other business owners, and also lowered the individual income tax rates on Kansans.

"This is an economic problem, not a tax policy problem," Brownback said defiantly after yet another revenue crash in February stemmed from surprisingly shallow tax receipts from corporations, individuals and general sales tax.

Brownback deserves credit for some measures he has advanced as governor, some of which were thoughtful and overdue. He developed a plan for extending the Ogallala Aquifer, the lifeline for western Kansas farmers. He also invested, quite wisely, in technical education.

Yet his vision for fiscal policy has been devastating, and has sometimes included methods usually not associated with conservatives.

Huge risks were taken with the state’s finances, including a $1 billion loan to play the stock market and allow for payments into the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System to be skipped. Last year, $400 million was borrowed to divert more cash into keeping state government operations afloat. That figure represented about $150 million more than legislators thought was under consideration.

As revenue shortfalls persist, and the outlook for the state grows bleaker, Brownback and his staff usually find someone, or something, to blame.

First, it was President Barack Obama because, well, if the campaign rhetoric works on voters, why not attach the same blame to failing tax revenue? Some sort of federal tax change also has been mentioned, as well as a slow national economy and a weak regional economy.

The excuses, however, grow old, especially when basic state services are at risk.

This isn’t the executive leadership Kansans expected when they voted for Brownback in 2010. He won with 63 percent of the vote then. In 2014, he won with 49 percent. To Brownback, however, that was a mandate to punch the pedal on his fiscal plan.

Oh yeah, the plan was called an experiment.

Whatever the terminology, it failed.

Brownback, whose popularity rating is the worst of any governor in America, must realize this and reverse course before additional damage proves irreparable.