Imperfect 2-tier tax plan shows Kansas House GOP can compromise. But the Senate? | Opinion
Are Kansas Republicans capable of compromise? The answer this week is: “Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”
And the “no” is winning.
One thing we’ve found out about the GOP’s supposed veto-proof majority in the Kansas Legislature is that it’s not so veto-proof. That was certainly the case earlier in the session, when Republicans failed to muster enough votes to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of their precious, precious flat tax.
Good thing, too. The single-rate tax would’ve been a boon to millionaires. Regular Kansans? Not so much.
The most hilarious thing about the failed flat tax effort was that Republicans tried to pitch it as a “bipartisan compromise.” Which was flatly — pardon the pun — untrue: A single-rate tax that delivers most of its benefits to the rich was a fantasy for the GOP only. Just about everybody else, including Kelly, saw it as a sop for the wealthy.
But the veto left a challenge for legislators. Kansas has a sizable budget surplus. Republicans want tax cuts. Kelly wants different tax cuts. Would they be able to figure out a solution? Would they be able to find a real bipartisan compromise?
I’ll be honest: I wasn’t betting on compromise.
Maybe that was too cynical. On Wednesday, the Kansas House unanimously — unanimously — passed a tax package that cuts income taxes and reduces the current three-tier tax structure down to two tiers.
That’s probably not the tax package I would’ve chosen. It’s clearly a half-step toward implementing the flat tax — a “take what you can get for now and hope you can get more later” approach. The problem is that a flat tax was a bad idea last year when Republicans made their first effort, remained a bad idea this year on their second try, and will still be a bad idea when they make another attempt again in the future.
What’s more, it’s not at all clear that Kelly will support the latest bill.
“I can’t tell you that the actual bill is acceptable,” she said last week, before the House bill passed, “but I do see it as an opportunity to engage in conversation with the Legislature to come up with something that works for all of us.”
Before the bill gets to Kelly, though, it has to get approval from the Kansas Senate. The prospects look shaky. Will Republicans in the upper chamber go for the compromise bill?
“They will not,” state Rep. Rui Xu, the Westwood Democrat, wrote Wednesday on social media.
He was right. Later Wednesday, The Sunflower State Journal reported that Senate President Ty Masterson used a procedural move that “essentially kills the bill.”
Why? “The Senate established a strong position in favor of a single rate and large exemptions for low income Kansans with a bipartisan supermajority,” Masterson said.
In other words: It’s the GOP’s way or the highway — at least in the Kansas Senate. And Senate Republicans still want a flat tax, even if there’s seemingly no real pathway to getting one.
Which is too bad.
I don’t love the dual-rate tax bill. Neither, it seems, do Republicans in the Kansas House. But in the lower chamber, at least, GOP and Democratic members alike seem to realize that it’s better to take the half a loaf that actually delivers some benefits to Kansans rather than wait for the full loaf that might never materialize.
Standing stubbornly on principle often leads to no benefits at all.
“If this is the best we can do today,” state Rep. Susan Humphries of Wichita said this week, “we’ll take it.”
Good for her. Let it be a lesson to Masterson, who seems more intent on displaying his ideological purity — flat tax or bust! — than in doing the best for Kansans that he can do today.
Joel Mathis is a regular Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle Opinion correspondent. He lives in Lawrence with his wife and son. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.