Should-Read: Kansas City Star: Jerry Moran: Don’t take failed Kansas tax plan nationwide

Should-Read: Since Sam Brownback planted his behind behind the Kansas governor’s desk at the end of 2012, Kansas has lost 6%-points of employment relative to the U.S. average. And there is nothing special about Kansas that would make such a huge swing happen in such a short period—nothing but the presence of a tax-cuts-for-the-rich nut in the governor’s chair and a complaisant legislature implementing his policies. I would not in a hundred years have dared speculate that Brownbackism in Brownbackistan could be so destructive. And yet I cannot think of any alternative explanation for what has gone on:

Kansas City Star: Jerry Moran: Don’t take failed Kansas tax plan nationwide: “Moran… could be the deciding vote…. He has already seen, first-hand, during a very painful five years, what will happen…

…At a forum Moran held at the Tasty Pastry in Clay Center last weekend, one of his constituents, Robynn Andracsek, of Olathe, neatly summed up the apparent thinking behind the bill: “Let’s cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires, and then let’s figure out how to pay for it.” Instead, she pleaded with him, “Let’s do a sensible tax cut. This is Kansas. We know the trickle-down experiment doesn’t work. All of our members of Congress from Kansas should know that.” Should but do not. Or if they do, betray no sign of it.

Every Kansan knows what happened after Gov. Sam Brownback’s 2012 cuts did away with the state income tax for some 330,000 business owners. The governor kept insisting—and in fact, still does—that robust growth and woohoo, jobs galore would result. When that didn’t happen, elected officials kept having to dip into funds set aside for highways and schools just to balance the budget. Finally, this year, lawmakers overrode a Brownback veto and at last repealed the LLC tax break and raised income tax rates.

That had to happen, as Andracsek reminded Moran, “because we decided we want schools and we want roads.” Knowing all that history, she asked him, “Why would you take this failed experiment nationwide? Our members of Congress should be the ones leading the way for tax reform that actually affects normal people, not just millionaires and billionaires.”… Moran assured voters in Clay Center that “I’m also cognizant of what people saw happen in Kansas.” And even if that weren’t the case, he said, “there is plenty of conversation about Kansas in Washington, D.C.”

Senator, we understand that you want to get something accomplished. But you don’t have the luxury of the ignorance that the president could plausibly claim when just days after his election he went around promising applauding, whistling patrons in one of New York’s best restaurants, “We’ll get your taxes down, don’t worry about it.” We want to believe you, Senator, when you say, “My goal is to find out which taxes you cut can actually help create more jobs, better jobs, higher-paying jobs … and which ones don’t do that. Not all of them do that.” “There are still a lot of conversations to be had,” you say. But please have the toughest one of all with that small-town banker who insists that his top priority is to stay connected to Kansans….

You know what’s wrong with this bill…. So all you have to do now is vote accordingly.