Kansas made national news Thursday night when PBS NewsHour reporter Paul Solman used us as a recent example of trickle-down economics.
Solman, formerly of the Harvard Business School, regularly reports on business and economics news.
In Thursday’s report, Solman interviewed State Sen. Ty Masterson, State Rep. Melissa Rooker, and Duane Goossen, former state budget director for three administrations, Republican and Democrat.
Of the three, Masterson was the outlier by defending the drastic tax cuts of 2012 and saying they should have been given more time to do their magic.
Rep. Rooker reminded listeners that legislators cut the state budget nine times in order to get expenses to meet the drastically reduced revenues. Rooker maintained the cuts severely affected the quality of the programs and services the state could provide.
“What has always been a draw for Kansas is the quality of life, the stability here, [the] excellence of our public school system. By cutting into those basics, we really have shot ourselves in the foot,” she said.
Goossen said that as soon as the tax cuts took effect, the state’s income dropped precipitously; by $700 million, or 25 percent, throwing the state into a budget crisis.
MASTERSON then let the other proverbial shoe drop.
For the tax cuts to truly work, he said, the state should have made even more funding cuts to programs and services such as public education, both K-12 and higher ed, less funding for road and bridge maintenance, state correctional facilities, state hospitals, children’s health programs, etc.
Masterson went so far as to say that Kansas is in need of “bariatric surgery,” our government is so bloated.
Personally, Masterson is not noted for his business acumen.
In 2012, his construction company went belly up and he was forced to file for bankruptcy.
In 2016, Masterson was rescued by Koch Industries when it tapped him as their director of GoCreate, a program that rents out space and equipment for industrial design projects on the campus of Wichita State University.
Because Congress is now debating a massive income tax cut in the same vein, it’s important to realize the cuts will be paid for primarily by reducing the size of entitlement programs such as Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.
That portends, as Ms. Rooker said, our quality of life will suffer. Or at least, that’s the case for the majority of Americans. Those who would benefit the most from the tax cuts, the elite, will be all the more cozy.
That’s not an aspiring future.
— Susan Lynn
