Virtually every effort to provide state tax relief over the last ten years was met with the ‘Don’t Be Like Kansas’ mantra from special interests. They’d claim tax cuts would produce budget deficits like Kansas experienced under Governor Sam Brownback. It wasn’t the concept of cutting taxes that produced deficits; states like North Carolina, Tennessee, and Indiana successfully provided tax relief while Kansas struggled. The problems that Kansas experienced were largely self-inflicted.
Everyone knew that the tax bill signed in 2012 would create deficits within two years without relatively minor spending reductions. Ample opportunities to avoid deficits by operating a bit more efficiently were ignored by Governor Brownback, Democrats, and some Republicans. Instead, they increased spending. (Yes, you read that right; spending was slashed, as some would have you believe.) That’s not the only thing that went wrong – the whole sordid tale is laid bare in What Was Really the Matter with the Kansas Tax Plan – but implementation failures and a torrent of false claims seemed to doom tax relief in the Sunflower State forever.
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