Starving the beast leaves us all hungry

opinions

November 4, 2013 - 12:00 AM

Gov. Brownback has an odd view of what success is.
Last week’s news of another month of low tax receipts was termed as good news by Brownback, and more evidence that his tax cuts “are working.”
He’s right. If you don’t collect taxes, revenues drop. Every time.
But darn, that state budget is a bother.
Since July’s start of the fiscal year, the state is $27 million short of expected income, mainly because of the massive income tax cuts. This October’s gathering of $187 million was 15 percent less than the official forecast.
For the fiscal year, it is behind almost 5 percent of projected income.
Nick Jordan, state revenue secretary, had the unenviable position of spinning the lost money in positive terms.
“Lower income tax rates are allowing people across Kansas to spend more of their hard-earned dollars as they see fit rather than sending them to Topeka.”
That was somehow to benefit the whole state – — schools, roads, prisons, social services — because people would use those savings to stimulate the economy.
Trouble is, it hasn’t happened.
Throughout the Midwest economic growth remains sluggish, according to the quarterly report issued by Nebraska’s Creighton University. Sales of agricultural-related machinery are down and new export orders declined dramatically for the month.
The partial shutdown of the federal government didn’t help.

HOW MUCH easier it is to not bank on the assumption that trickle-down economics will work — because they never, ever have — and simply set a tax rate that adequately funds state obligations.
When someone earning $30 million pays the same income tax rate as someone earning $30,000, surely some warning signal, some light bulb, goes off, shedding light at not only the inequity of the system but also the lost income to state coffers.
Kansas has become part and parcel of the “war on the poor,” not to mention its young, its disabled and its elderly.
With the state’s refusal to expand its Medicaid rolls, Kansas is second from the bottom in services to the poor and disabled.
If the legislature continues to refuse an increase funding for its public schools, our children will be deprived of an adequate education.

THIS IS NOT the Kansas of our forefathers; nor does it make for a promising future.
— Susan Lynn

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