Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly axed the tax on groceries. Will she get credit from the GOP? | Opinion

One of the big reasons Donald Trump won the presidential election — we’re told — is that voters were angry about the high price of eggs.

Americans don’t much like inflation.

Well, the price of eggs is still rising, though it doesn’t have much to do with who is in the White House. Avian flu is taking a toll on all the birds that actually produce the eggs, and nobody has figured out how to put a stop to that.

And in any case, Trump has already backed away from his campaign promise to bring down grocery prices.

“I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard,” he told Time magazine in early December.

Oh. Well then.

Here’s the funny thing, though: In Kansas, grocery prices are already a bit lower than they were just a few days ago.

That’s largely thanks to Gov. Laura Kelly.

The questions here: Will she get credit from Kansas voters? And — since she’s term-limited as governor — what would that look like, anyway?

Just to bring you up to date: On Jan. 1, the state’s sales tax on most groceries ended completely. That’s not to say you won’t pay any sales taxes on your food purchases — lots of local communities still ask for an extra penny or two for every dollar you spend on food.

But as Kelly has long advocated, the state itself has “axed the tax,” the end of a drawn-out process. Kansas imposed a 6.5% tax on groceries as recently as 2022. It fell to 4% at the beginning of 2023, 2% a year later and now it’s entirely zeroed out.

If you pay, say, the $4 sticker price for a carton of dozen eggs — your mileage may vary depending on where you shop — that’s 26 cents in state taxes that you’re no longer paying that you would have just three years ago.

Now multiply those savings across all the bread, produce and meat and other foodstuffs your family buys in a given week.

All those pennies add up, don’t they?

Again: Kelly deserves the lion’s share of the credit here. Her standing as a Democratic governor facing down a Legislature that’s dominated by GOP supermajorities during much of her tenure has meant that she is often — by necessity — more reactive than proactive when setting tax policy across the state.

But Kelly was the driving force in this case, announcing the elimination of grocery taxes as a top priority during her first campaign for governor all the way back in 2018.

To be sure, there were a few legislative Republicans who really were enthusiastic about cutting grocery taxes. But for the most part they seemed to regard the “ax the tax” policy as a plaything — repeatedly trying to tie passage of grocery tax cuts to other priorities that didn’t have as much benefit for regular Kansas families, such as a flat tax that would give multimillionaires a big break.

They also timed the implementation of the grocery tax cuts to start after the 2022 gubernatorial election, in a transparent bid to make sure Kelly didn’t get credit from voters.

So let’s make sure she gets that credit.

And maybe Kansans should keep an important difference in mind: Donald Trump promised to bring down the price of eggs. He won’t. Laura Kelly made the same promise, and kept it.

This story was originally published January 3, 2025 at 5:06 AM.