Quote:A few universities will shut down and declare bankruptcy. Graduations will be canceled. Students will lose scholarships. Select hospitals will close. Patients will lose funding for treatment of disabilities. Some reports of child abuse will go uninvestigated.

Quote:“Gov. Sam Brownback’s income tax-cut plan to spur job growth in Kansas has become a full-time disaster. On Friday, the state announced it had lost 3,000 total jobs in August. That’s on top of the 5,100 jobs lost in July.”

Quote:Since 1980, U.S. investment as a percentage of GDP was sliced in half, from nearly 24 percent to 12 percent, leaving the United States 174th in the world. The result was a dearth of real value added products and productivity.

Quote:Per capita state spending has fallen from $2,089 in 2009 to $1,883 in 2015, a decrease of 10 percent. This spending restraint is quite remarkable. For comparison, per capita state spending grew nationally by 8.5 percent during the same time period. 

One way that Jindal reduced spending was cutting the state’s workforce. State government employment has decreased 26 percent since he’s been governor, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Additionally, he passed broad pension reforms. All state employees hired after July 2013 receive a cash-balance retirement plan, similar to a 401(k) plan, instead of a traditional defined-benefit pension. 

Jindal has also cut state higher education spending. State higher education spending fell from $1.1 billion a year in 2009 to $535 million in 2015. His 2016 budget includes further cuts to the state higher education system, but the cuts were avoided in a last-minute budget deal under a complicated financing structure. Jindal’s strong fiscal record is partly undercut by Louisiana’s generous economic development programs, i.e., corporate welfare.

• In a time of severe crisis and a deleveraging private sector (that is, paying off debt and cutting spending), Jindal cut public spending and especially severe cuts to its workforce.
  
• He als halved the spending on higher education and would have made further cuts if not thwarted.
  
• He doled out money on corporations (film tax credits, a baseball team)
  

Quote:By all of these measures, Indiana’s economy has not sunk under Pence, even if it hasn’t significantly outpaced the national trends. But Pence also claimed that “conservative principles work every time you put them into practice.” And while his record-setting income tax break may not have been terribly big, other Republican governors have put conservative principles to work with huge tax cuts and reaped the rewards of budget crises and economic shocks.

After Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback ® passed a package of tax cuts in 2012 and 2013, the budget has stayed on the verge of deficit, lawmakers have had to slash spending on education and anti-poverty programs, its credit rating has been downgraded, and job growth has been slow. Former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal ®instituted tax cuts that have thrown his state into a budget crisis that is endangering basic services like hospitals and child protection agencies. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker ® cut taxes by more than $4.7 billion, yet the state’s job growth has lagged behind the neighboring state of Minnesota and poverty has risen. Meanwhile, the tax cuts have been far more costly than originally thought and led to a huge budget deficit.

Quote:Pence has boasted about the tax cuts he oversaw, and Trump himself bragged that Pence had “enacted the largest income tax cut in the state’s history” when he introduced him as his running mate. But that is not actually saying much. During Pence’s tenure, Indiana’s income tax rate was reduced from 3.4 percent to 3.3 percent beginning in 2015, and it will drop again to 3.23 percent at the beginning of 2017. That’s the largest cut because it is one of just two income tax cuts in the state’s history, according to an economist who has studied the state’s tax policy for 30 years. The other cut was a 0.1 percentage point reduction in the 1970s.

Quote:Kansas has had trouble paying for much of anything since 2012, when conservative legislators decided to implement a bevy of right-wing economic policies—and lead their state into a fiscal crisis. In order to keep funding its government despite dramatically decreased tax revenue, the Legislature has flipped all its piggy banks. One of them is the Kansas Department of Transportation—or what sarcastic Kansans now call “the Bank of KDOT,” for the stupendous quantity of money that has been diverted from its coffers to the Kansas general fund and state agencies. Kneecapping the agency that builds roads isn’t just a great metaphor for Gov. Sam Brownback’s tenure. Like the cut to the state’s university funding, this damage will be most keenly felt years from now, when deferred maintenance and high debt loads take their toll.

As many expected, the reductions have been a calamity for the state's fiscal health. Kansas has found itself chronically short of funds, forcing legislators to slash spending on things like education and help for the poor. The state's credit rating has been downgraded, and for all the trouble, its job growth has been absolutely anemic.

Quote:After giving Gov. Sam Brownback ® a free hand to turn Kansas into a science lab for hard-right policy experiments for more than five disastrous years, voters finally yanked the leash Tuesday night. At least 11 separate conservative members of the legislature lost their primaries to more moderate Republicans in the state, with a number of contests still too close to call with confidence.

While the wave won’t unlock the statehouse doors for Democrats, who are dramatically outnumbered in both House and Senate, the primaries signal that voters share the frustration that some Kansas Republicans have begun to voice with Brownback’s unbreakable commitment to trickle-down economic policies that have left Kansas so insolvent it can’t pay for a basic public education system.

Quote:Kansas’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will grow at half the rate of national GDP in 2015, according to new projections from the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Research Department, marking another year of sluggish growth since Kansas enacted massive tax cuts meant to spur its economy. Kansas’ huge tax cuts took effect at the start of 2013.  That year, Kansas’ economy actually shrank, even as the national economy grew.  Then, in 2014, Kansas’ economy managed some growth, but still lagged national growth.  And the state’s new projections for 2015 find that Kansas’ real GDP will grow by 1.2 percent this year, half the 2.4 percent projected nationally.  (See chart.)

Quote:Instead of adding the 25,000 jobs a year that Brownback promised, Kansas actually lost 5,400 jobs over the 12 months ending in February.

Quote:But those who will evaluate a revised Trump tax cut proposal should keep something in mind: Moore and Laffer were principal architects of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s massive tax cuts, and their predictions that those tax cuts would spur an “immediate” Kansas economic boom have proved strikingly inaccurate. In fact, the tax cut failed to boost the Kansas economy:

• Since it took effect in January 2013, total employment in Kansas has risen only 2.4 percent, compared to 6.5 percent nationally.  Private sector employment in Kansas has risen 3.2 percent, compared to 7.6 percent nationally.
  
• The state’s economy has grown less than half as fast as the national economy; Kansas’ gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4.3 percent from the end of 2012 through the end of 2015, while national GDP rose 11.5 percent.
  
• Kansas’ share of newly opened business establishments in the United States has actually declined slightly rather than increased.[8]
  

Quote:Moreover, the Kansas tax cut package has had a deleterious impact on the state’s financial stability and the provision of critical services.  For example:

• Personal income tax revenues in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2016 (fiscal year 2016) were almost $700 million lower than those received in fiscal year 2013,[9] when the tax cut first took effect, even though the economy nationally is stronger in 2016 than it was in 2013.  Receipts dropped immediately by slightly more than $700 million (24 percent), and the meager economic growth that occurred in Kansas from 2014 to 2016 boosted collections by only $30 million, or less than 2 percent.[10]
  

• Total General Fund revenues in 2016 were $570 million below 2013 levels, despite significant sales and cigarette tax increases enacted to partially offset the income tax losses.[11]  The General Fund’s ending balance fell from $709 million in 2013 to $40 million in 2016 (just 0.7 percent of General Fund spending).[12]  That’s important because Kansas’ General Fund balance is its “rainy day fund.”[13]  Should a recession hit and tax revenues shrink as household incomes and retail sales fall, the state will need to cut programs or enact tax increases almost immediately because it will have very little savings to tap. 
  

• The General Fund’s depletion occurred even though the state transferred to the Fund substantial tax revenues that were collected to finance road maintenance and construction.[14]  The resulting reduction in infrastructure funding has forced the state to postpone numerous highway projects indefinitely.[15]
  

• Because the tax cuts leave less state revenue with which to repay people who lend the state money by buying its bonds, Kansas’ bond rating has been downgraded twice — in 2014, and most recently on July 26, 2016.[16]  Lower bond ratings mean that the state will likely have to pay a higher interest rate on future borrowings, raising the cost of infrastructure projects such as school construction and road building.