Vox: Kansas Republicans end the state’s failed tax-reform experiment

Vern said:

oh MR, what another sad example of your dishonesty. You've posted no facts. "the left believes tax cuts are always a bad thing" is just your obedient opinion. And not only did I not "accept " your obedient opinion, I and others proved it was false. The actual facts are that Obama, Clinton and Kennedy cut taxes. Your post once again proves when its time to choose narrative or integrity, conservatives choose narrative.

Click to expand...

Moderate Right said:

Oh Vernie, there is no one more dishonest than you.

Click to expand...

KLATTU said:

They should get a smart Democrat ( I know-oxymoron)to advise them on their state finances!
Special Report: The man behind the fiscal fiasco in Illinois
Hundreds of politicians share blame for drowning the state’s government in billions of dollars of debt and unfunded pension liabilities. But House Speaker Michael Madigan – a dominant political force for three decades – has been the constant in key decisions that created the mess.

Click to expand...

jonny5 said:

Balance is balance. If you take money from one account to another or sell some stuff, whats the difference? Thats the whole reason to have savings. And of course tax reciepts reduce revenue. Thats the POINT of tax cuts. Return money to the people so they can use it better. Maybe it didnt work, but part of the reason it didnt was as I listed above. They didnt go far enough.

View attachment 67218836

Theres the actual income and revenue, of which INCOME TAX is only one source. They also have sales and other taxes and plenty of it.

Click to expand...

Vern said:

again, you cowardly deflect from my post. when you've been proven wrong, why do you feel its better to make a fool of yourself than be honest? Obama, Clinton and Kennedy cut taxes. that proves your opinion false. Your post once again proves when its time to choose narrative or integrity, conservatives choose narrative.

Click to expand...

Moderate Right said:

True but it may have finally reached a point where it doesn't matter. Now I'm not going to defend Trump but we had the Republican establishment spend ungodly amounts of money attacking Trump in the primaries and it only encouraged voters to vote for Trump instead because they knew they did not want the establishment. Same thing happened in the general. Hillary didn't take notice that the more people who attacked Trump, the more voted for him so she made the very same mistake the Republican establishment had made. I'm not sure how deep the pockets of these people are and how much money they are willing to flush down the toilet and not get the results they wanted but they probably haven't learned their lesson yet.

Click to expand...

Moderate Right said:

Vern, it is a waste of time debating with you. If someone on the right posted irrefutable proof that there were 26 letters in the alphabet you would not accept it. Have a nice day.

Click to expand...

MTAtech said:

Except that Trump benefited enormously from free coverage that was essentially promotion. Even MSNBC covered Trump rallies end-to-end. Someone calculated the value of that coverage as $2 billion. Moreover, even though I am sure you will try to downplay the effect, the Russians trolled endlessly with anti-HRC viewpoints and propaganda.

Click to expand...

JasperL said:

Right, they didn't go far enough because your own figures show they liquidated $700M in savings, and projected $750M in "bridge funding" which are loans. So just in that 6 year period, the structural shortfall was about $1.5 Billion.

And it does matter that they liquidated savings because it indicates the fiscal path was unsustainable. Again, go tell your wife you're doing fine as you empty all your savings and take out loans from your 401(k). If she has a brain, she'll call you an idiot and point out that, no, doing fine is living within your means, which is paying for current expenses out of current income, and then putting some away.

Click to expand...

SouthernDemocrat said:

I live on the Kansas side of the Kansas City metro. Prior to Brownback, our state's taxes were not high compared to our peers in the first place.

Kansas is not Massachusetts, its never had a big government with big government programs. The state has always just done infrastructure, policing, education, and other basic government functions. Per-capita state spending was lower than average before Brownback took office. What he did was take a fiscally responsible state, that had a small government to begin with, and cut taxes to such an extent that the basic services the state is expected to deliver - like roads and education, were no longer sufficiently funded.

Furthermore, its asinine for Kansas to cut its income taxes lower than Missouri income taxes, and then expect to make it up by raising sales taxes, when the bulk of its residents live on the Kansas side of the KC metro, many of them work in Missouri, and thus will then pay nothing in income taxes to Kansas, and will just make their big purchases on the Missouri side if you jack up sales taxes too much. We live in Kansas and work in Missouri. Prior to Brownback, we would pay some state income taxes to Missouri and some to Kansas. Now we pay nothing to Kansas because we just deduct our Missouri income taxes from our Kansas state income tax liabilities. Now, I don't like paying taxes anymore than anyone else does, but you can't run a state like that. We didn't move from the Missouri side to the Kansas side to drop our tax rates, no one does that. We did moved 2 miles into Kansas for the schools and infrastructure. If they don't fund that adequately, then what is the point of moving to the Kansas side? It is not a coincidence that when Brownback and his far right cronies started running their "experiment", the Northern side of the KC Metro in Missouri all of a sudden became the fastest growing part of the KC metro and it now even has the best schools.

Click to expand...

Moderate Right said:

And what do you want to do about Russia? Hillary used all the guns at her disposal as well and got much help from the left slanted mainstream media constantly criticizing Trump. I have to admit I didn't think the left could come up with any more excuses as to why Hillary lost but you just did - it was MSNBC's fault Hillary lost. Maybe they should be investigated as being an arm of RT. I agree with you on one thing though. The more negative publicity there was against Trump the more voters were convinced he was not establishment and voted for him. You can't blame Russia for that. That was on the rabid left.

Click to expand...

Acosta made it clear he will largely defer to Donald Trump — saying he will “ultimately follow his direction” on an agenda that includes slashing worker health and safety and job training, repealing overtime protections for up to 13 million people and rolling back fiduciary rules designed to protect workers and retirees from investment advisors’ conflicts of interest.
link

Click to expand...

MTAtech said:

What to do about Russia? We, as policy, need to do what needs to be done to prevent any foreign nation from putting their thumb on the election process, so that their favorite candidate wins.

As for 'Hillary used all the guns at her disposal as well and got much help from the left slanted mainstream media constantly criticizing Trump," I seem to remember endless coverage of Hillary's emails instead of policy. When they weren't covering emails, a portion of the coverage was innuendo about the Clinton Foundation, that did nothing wrong. Trump's foundation's actual misdeeds weren't covered widely and were relegated to sources like NPR.

As for (uniformed) voters convincing themselves that Trump was somehow "anti-establishment," that turned out to be BS. While Trump railed that he would "drain the swamp" his cabinet is comprised of billionaires who tow the establishment line. He railed against HRC's ties to Goldman Sachs, then puts five of them in high office, including the cabinet. Trump's agenda and policies are identical to what the GOP establishment push.

The GOP establishment wants the ACA repealed and replaced by something that tosses tens of million of health insurance. That's exactly what Trumpcare does.
The GOP establishment wants environmental protections gutted. That's exactly what Trump did by nominating Tom Price as EPA head and gutting the environment by executive orders (that Trump objected to when Obama used them.)
The GOP establishment wants a hard stance against labor. Trump originally nominated Andrew Puzder, the CEO of the company that owns the Hardee's and Carl's Jr. Puzder withdrew facing high opposition. His approved labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, is not much better. The reality is that there isn't a hill of beans difference between right-wing establishment policies and the policies that Trump supports.

Click to expand...

jonny5 said:

And the people elected him to do just that. So while YOU may want more spending, the majority of voters didnt. Its just as usual the politicians screwed up, making minor ineffective changes and failing to deal with the same spending issues that plague all govts. Namely over spending on education, and social programs, which make up 90% of your budget. And over complicating the tax code. What they should have done with simplify and widen the tax base, and get rid of tax burdens on producers.

https://kansaspolicy.org/houston-we-have-a-spending-problem/

View attachment 67218843

Click to expand...

Moderate Right said:

The email investigation had nothing to do with Russia. Can you prove that it did? And, for the one millionth time, what do we need to do about Russia?

Click to expand...

jonny5 said:

No, they didnt go far enough because the tax reform didnt have the effect on growth they desired. They had to use savings because they have a spending problem. Same as my wife.

Click to expand...

MTAtech said:

Whether the email stories derived from Russia isn't germane to my argument, which was designed to counter your view that HRC "got much help from the left slanted mainstream media constantly criticizing Trump." As the graph shows, that "left slanted mainstream media" spend 3X as much air-time talking about HRC emails compared to policy. Had they not, I am certain that the negative narrative against her among those few voters in key states wouldn't have taken root, giving Trump the an Electoral College Victory that ranked 46th in 58 Elections.

Click to expand...

Moderate Right said:

So now we have to add the left leaning mainstream media (in addition to MSNBC) onto the list to be investigated for collusion with Russia in trying to influence our election. None of it was Hillary's fault. You continue to make the case that Hillary's loss had nothing to do with Russia trying to influence our election. You guys really need to make up your minds. First you say it was Comey who lost the election, not the Russians. Then you say it was the Russians and now you were saying it was the media coverage, which had nothing to do with the Russians. And, for the one million and oneth time, what should we do to Russia?

Click to expand...

MTAtech said:

Referencing the bold portion above, I have been making the opposite argument. Much of the negative chatter on social media that leaks into regular media was made in Russia.

Click to expand...

jonny5 said:

Balance is balance. If you take money from one account to another or sell some stuff, whats the difference? Thats the whole reason to have savings. And of course tax reciepts reduce revenue. Thats the POINT of tax cuts. Return money to the people so they can use it better. Maybe it didnt work, but part of the reason it didnt was as I listed above. They didnt go far enough.

Click to expand...

Theres the actual income and revenue, of which INCOME TAX is only one source. They also have sales and other taxes and plenty of it.

Click to expand...

Moderate Right said:

So now we have to add the left leaning mainstream media (in addition to MSNBC) onto the list to be investigated for collusion with Russia in trying to influence our election. None of it was Hillary's fault. You continue to make the case that Hillary's loss had nothing to do with Russia trying to influence our election. You guys really need to make up your minds. ...

Click to expand...

MTAtech said:

Referencing the bold portion above, I have been making the opposite argument. Much of the negative chatter on social media that leaks into regular media was made in Russia.

Click to expand...

Moderate Right said:

That's just it. You make the argument that Russia influenced the election and that Trump or his aides colluded with them ...

Click to expand...

SouthernDemocrat said:

You are arguing from ignorance on this one.

Brownback has the lowest approval rating of any governor on the country. Obviously the citizens of Kansas do not like what he is doing. Moreover, the hard right conservatives that came into the statehouse with him were largely swept out last year, and replaced by moderate Republicans (there are essentially 3 parties in Kansas: Democrats, Conservative Republicans, Moderate Republicans). So obviously the people of Kansas were not liking what they were doing.

If you actually look at per-capita spending in Kansas, its below average at $5,167. It is particularly below average when you consider that much of the state is very rural and has a poor local tax base. https://ballotpedia.org/Total_state_government_expenditures

You can't pave roads, educate kids, provide policing, and have a nominal Medicaid program for nothing.

Finally, that graph doesn't allow for population growth, which is a big factor in government spending. That is why per-capita spending is a much better metric. http://www.ipsr.ku.edu/ksdata/ksah/population/2pop1.pdf

I did not want "more spending", but rather, like most residents of the state, believed that spending and taxes were at a reasonable level prior to Brownback's experiment. Once again, this state is not Massachusetts or California, there are no big government programs to cut.

Click to expand...

Critter7r said:

that's funny. Their cutting of taxes didn't work, so they should cut more taxes. Sound like the exact thing libruls are accused of with welfare when people say that spending money on welfare isn't working but libruls just want to spend more.




Right, so when the government's income stream from citizens' income taxes goes down, guess what they do? Right. They raise the others.

Click to expand...

JasperL said:

Unfortunately, similar to little children finding out there is no Santa Clause, right wingers in this real live experiment learned that there is no budgetary free lunch. Tax rate cuts lower revenue!

Click to expand...

Moderate Right said:

That's just it. You make the argument that Russia influenced the election and that Trump or his aides colluded with them and then you turn around and post a graph showing that it was the media hyping Hillary's email investigation that influenced the election. Are you saying that the mainstream media was colluding with Trump and the Russians to influence the election?

Click to expand...

jonny5 said:

Approval ratings arent vote, and I was responding to what he DID, which is what he elected for. Furthermore, we arent talking about NO spending, just less spending. No on is asking you to pave roads, etc with NOTHING. And that graph does allow for population growth, which is which is why spending goes up. Its just going up even faster than it should have been. You say no big govt programs to cut, but I found them, Education and Healthcare, two things that are not govts responsibility and which use up nearly your entire revenue.

Click to expand...