Lobbyist-written tax cut bill would put Kansas on ‘bullet train to Brownbackville’

Did Kansas Republicans learn nothing from the disastrous Brownback-era tax cuts?

We ask because a bill cutting Kansas taxes by an estimated $475 million annually passed in the Kansas Senate this week. Lawmakers were so excited, they had tripled the size of the package of cuts by the time they were finished amending the thing.

This package is unaffordable, especially in the middle of a pandemic.

It’s so out of line that four Republicans voted with Democrats, all of whom opposed the bill, though it still passed easily.

The bill was drafted by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce. So instead of cutting the regressive sales tax on food, which hits low-income Kansans hardest, this bill would provide relief to businesses and to those Kansans who are paying higher state taxes because of the federal tax changes championed by Donald Trump in 2017. Those changes discouraged itemized deductions, and this change would favor the wealthy.

This bill also exempts Social Security and other pensions from taxes, and that provision would at least help all older Kansans. But in all, the measure would cost the state more than $1.3 billion in revenues over three years, and would inevitably lead to budget shortfalls. (And you remember what happens after those, right?)

Democratic Sen. Ethan Corson, of Prairie Village, rightly called this legislation a “bullet train to Brownbackville.”

Gov. Laura Kelly, who vetoed a similar measure two years ago, warns that it would “blow a hole” in the state’s budget, and what’s more would help only the top 6% of Kansans.

Kelly proposed an amendment that would have paid for some cuts by imposing a sales tax on digital products — streaming services, for example — and applying the Kansas sales tax to out-of-state retailers such as Amazon. But lawmakers kept the tax cuts and rejected the governor’s ideas on how to pay for them.

Do we really not know how this will end? Same as after deep income tax cuts were enacted in 2012 and 2013 under GOP Gov. Sam Brownback. And with even less excuse, because we’ve tried this “experiment” before.