Background 's 2009 campaign poster for the
2010 Kansas gubernatorial election As a conservative Republican Senator from Kansas, Brownback had been reelected by large margins in
1998 and
2004, and had also run briefly
for president in 2008, withdrawing before the
primaries began. In 2010 he ran for
governor, defeating his Democratic opponent
Tom Holland 63.3% to 32.2%. Also winning a sweeping victory in 2010 in Kansas was the
Tea Party movement of the Republican party, whose members largely shared Brownback's views and who made up most of the Republican majority in the 2010 Kansas House of Representatives—the largest majority in half a century. Some Kansans interviewed by a journalist and Burdett Loomis, a political scientist at the University of Kansas, speculated that Brownback hoped that, after his failed first attempt in 2008, the success of the tax cuts would help launch another campaign for the presidency.
Kansas Senate Bill Substitute HB 2117, "one of the largest income tax cuts in Kansas history",
Initial reception As the bill was signed, supporters predicted an economic revival in Kansas, while opponents predicted an unparalleled budget crisis. Brownback stated the plan would deliver a "shot of adrenaline" to the Kansas economy. His administration projected the creation of 23,000 jobs a year in Kansas in addition to those created by natural economic growth. After signing the bill, Brownback argued that the cuts would pay for themselves through the increased revenue resulting from boosting the state's economic growth. He also called it a "red-state experiment". in 2015 In the spring of 2014, monthly revenue for state government "crashed", and fell "massively short of projections". warned that job creation and economic growth in Kansas were lagging those of its neighboring states. Nonetheless, many conservative sources were enthusiastic.
The Wall Street Journal published an
op-ed by Brownback where he called his experiment "A Midwest Renaissance Rooted in the Reagan Formula", compared his tax cut policies with those of
Ronald Reagan, and announced a "prosperous future" for Republican-dominated Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. Influential anti-tax activist
Grover Norquist defended Brownback's tax cuts as "the right thing for the economy", and claimed that Kansas was in better economic shape than the tax-cut critics alleged, and that the state had "provided a model, a successful model, that will phase out the income tax."
Results By early 2017, Kansas had "nine rounds of budget cuts over four years, three credit downgrades, missed state payments", and what
The Atlantic called "an ongoing atmosphere of fiscal crisis".
Budget and revenue , which saw drastic budget cuts.
Wyandotte High School in
Wyandotte County, Kansas (pictured) was among the
public schools hit hardest by Brownback's tax cuts. By 2017, National Public Radio reported state lawmakers were seeking to close a $900 million budget gap, Earlier efforts to close budget gaps had left Kansas "well below national averages" in a wide range of public services from K-12 education to housing to police and fire protection. eliminating school programs, cutting maintenance, phasing out teaching positions, School districts were consolidated and some schools were closed. This first transfer of funds had already caused the Kansas Department of Transportation to "indefinitely delay" two dozen road expansion projects in April 2016. According to Kansas State Senator
Carolyn McGinn, "we've had pretty good roads, but now we're starting to see the deterioration." Kansas became the only state without a state-funded arts commission, and closed nine social service offices around the state. S&P downgraded its credit rating first from AA+ to AA in August 2014, due to a budget that analysts described as structurally unbalanced, and again in February 2017 from AA to AA−.
Jobs and growth By 2018, overall growth and job creation in Kansas had underperformed the national economy, neighboring states, and
Nebraska. In January 2014, following the passage of both tax cuts, the Nebraska labor force grew by a net 35,000 non-farm jobs through April 2017, compared to only 28,000 in Kansas, which has a larger labor force. Davis was endorsed by over 100 former and current Kansas Republican officials who criticized Brownback's leadership. Brownback managed to defeat Davis by 3.69 percent, a decline from the more than 30% margin he had gained in his first governor's race victory, thanks at least in part to effective campaign ads attacking Davis for his brief detention during a 1998 police raid of a strip club. Brownback's popularity continued to suffer in Kansas after his re-election as governor. Three separate polls between November 2015 and September 2016 ranked Brownback as the nation's least-popular governor, the September 2016 poll showing an approval rating of 23%. Two years later, "a wave of moderate Republicans" opposed to the tax cuts replaced many of the conservative supporters of the experiment in the state legislature.
Repeal unanimously ruled that Brownback's deliberate underfunding of public schools caused by tax cuts and revenue drops was
unconstitutional. By 2017, after a protracted battle, overriding Brownback's veto of them. By April 2017, 66% of Kansans told pollsters they disapproved of Brownback's job performance, with 27% still approving. After "years of dealing with budget" shortfalls by borrowing, "quick fixes" and consumption tax hikes on tobacco, fuel, and other consumer goods, The Senate passed bill SB 30 (38–0 with 2 not voting) on February 2, 2017. Three weeks later, the House passed SB 30, as amended (123–2). Shortly after Brownback vetoed this first attempt, the legislature attempted to override his veto but came up three votes short in the Kansas Senate. The measure was estimated to boost state taxes by $1.2 billion over two years, in part by raising the top income tax rate from 4.6% to 5.7%, and by restoring the pass-through business tax. In the
2018 Kansas gubernatorial election, the Republican candidate, conservative
Kris Kobach, promised to "try to roll back the tax hikes" of the 2017 legislative session, and urged a return to "a more low-tax structure like we had from 2013 to 2016" during the Brownback administration. He told voters that "Kansas doesn't have a revenue problem. Kansas has a spending problem." ==Impact==