Last week a reader emailed me about a new meme he had just come across:

Heard a random Republican talking head on NPR recently, and when the interviewer questioned him on the “Kansas experiment,” his automatic response was a) Kansas “massively” increased spending when they cut taxes, so that’s why they have problems; and b) North Carolina has done the same thing without the increased spending and it’s working great. Of course this smells like bullshit to me, but I don’t actually know. Are either of these assertions correct?

I’m too lazy to waste time on North Carolina right now, but spending in Kansas is easy enough to check. Here it is:

Since 2011, when Sam Brownback took office promising a “red state experiment,” general fund spending has been flat while spending from all sources has declined by 1.7 percent. I’m pretty sure this doesn’t count as “massively” increasing spending.

Bottom line: Brownback slashed taxes, kept spending flat, wrecked Kansas schools, and turned in lousy economic performance compared to his neighboring states:

By just about any measure, the red-state experiment failed, and Republicans can hardly run away from Kansas fast enough. I guess their latest wheeze is to pretend that Brownback was a faker all along and it was really North Carolina we should have kept an eye on. Uh huh.