State "Windfall" tax revenue should go back into our pockets (mostly corporate pockets)?

Republicans have successfully sold the public on the weird concept that a state's surplus general revenue is an example of over taxation. And they always want to give it back, as if everything is paid for, replaced, and updated for the next generation.

Remember: Just when the country was about to balance its budget (without a constitutional amendment), and start paying down the national debt, George W. Bush gave all that "surplus" tax revenue back, and we're now $22 trillion in the hole. 

Here's what I mean; Kansas Republicans want all that extra state revenue, what they call a "windfall," to go "back in (our) pocket." Not into their starving underfunded schools and health care...

How does this make fiscal sense to anyone?

AP: Top Republican lawmakers in Kansas struggled to find enough GOP votes to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly's veto of a tax relief bill. The bill was designed to prevent individuals and businesses from paying more in state income taxes ... allowing them to keep itemizing even if they don't on their federal returns. Changes in federal tax laws raised money for Kansas, in part by discouraging individual filers from claiming itemized deductions.

Kelly framed the bill as a return to a tax-cutting experiment under former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback that made Kansas nationally notorious because of the persistent budget woes that followed.

Freeloader Republican Message Crazy:

Republican leaders made it their top priority this year and argue that failing to return the revenue "windfall" represents an unlegislated tax increase. GOP State Chairman Mike Kuckelman and Secretary Emily Wellman issued statements Wednesday calling for a veto override.

"As a taxpayer, I might not even understand that Kansas took additional taxes from me that was intended to go in my pocket," Kuckelman said during a telephone interview. 

GOP holdout State Sen. John Skubal, a moderate Republican, said he was elected in his Kansas City-area district in 2016 to help "fix' state government. "To do that, we have to have some money," he said.

Ya think? And the lamebrained cost of the Republican bill, and more amazingly, who would get it?

Kelly's administration estimated that the bill would have cost the state $209 million during the budget year beginning in July, undercutting her plans to boost spending on public schools and expand Medicaid health coverage for the needy. Much of the taxpayer savings would have gone to corporations, particularly those with operations outside the U.S.

Walker's "Wisconsin Comeback" may be worse than Kansas Gov. Brownback's, which is now being reversed by Republicans there!!!

I've been calling certain Republican tax cut backers "freeloaders" for years. I'd like to say California Gov. Jerry Brown got it from me, but who cares...:

WND: The latest “gift” from Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrat-controlled legislature: A $5.2 billion tax hike.

Gov. Brown: “The freeloaders – I’ve had enough of them. They have a president that doesn’t tell the truth and they’re following suit.”

The indignant response by freeloading "tax cut" Republican voters, who hate hearing the truth?

Citizens who work and pay taxes are “freeloading” on the system and have no right to complain about the tax burden government puts on them. It’s amazing how Democrat politicians get so secure in their elected offices that they think they can insult anyone and get away with it.

Yea, that's nothing like Republican politicians so secure in their gerrymandered elected offices that they think they can cut services, destroy access to health care and sell off public investments without consequences? Those damn Democrats huh? 

Basically, the "freeloader" label fits, and conservatives hate it:

All while they continue their political road to increasing the tax and regulation burdens on average citizens. Jerry Brown’s insult is the latest blatant example of that – following the insulting epithet Hillary Clinton laid on voters – calling them “deplorables.” It’s clear that Democrats have no respect for anyone who disagrees with their point of view.

All this is supposed to deal with road and infrastructure repairs – things that should have been done gradually over the years but that, in their “wisdom,” politicians put off and delay until it’s an emergency. It’s almost impossible to survive in California if you don’t drive. Our vehicles are a lifeline to survival for jobs, school and just daily life. Any changes in the price of fuel presents a major hit to every budget.

Anyone else detect the disconnect, incoherence and cluelessness in the above statement? Even worse, the articles writer rattled off the following list while trashing Brown and still pushing tax cuts. This is what makes conservative fiscal policy so unrealistically bad. Freeloader fits...:

As for the freeloading Californians he so disdains, Jerry has lots more in store for them. He still promotes his plan for high-speed rail from southern California to the north. Then there’s his plan for twin water tunnels to move water from north to south – original estimate $17 billion – but the construction overruns and costs to water districts, users and property owners is open ended.

Then, add state pension obligations, bond obligations, health-care costs and the proposal to pay all criminal defense costs for illegals living in the state who face deportation – and the fact that the state budget for next year already shows a $1.6 billion deficit – and you have a lot of freeloaders who will have every right to consider the appeal of getting out while the getting is good.

In fact, more people are leaving the state than moving in ... Consider yourself warned.

You mean the freeloaders? Sad. Funny thing, Republicans are always telling liberals to move if they don't like what's happening in their state. Well, back at you. There are a lot of other "deplorable" states to go to. 

Wisconsin to Fail Like Kansas? The Kansas Comeback was Gov. Scott Walker's basic blueprint for Wisconsin. It was a freeloader formula that gave baby boom politicians lower taxes now, but sky high taxes for their kids to rebuild whatever is left. Thank you? 

See if you can spot the similar failed policies in Kansas below, that we're now seeing passed in Wisconsin. 

You'll notice that this completely contradicts the GOP talking points that every state is unique, or those one-size-fits-all laws are bad. Let's be honest: Republicans have only one plan for every state, BUT there is one huge difference; Wisconsin Republicans will never roll back the tax cuts like they are doing in Kansas:

AP: Some Republicans see lesson in rollback of Kansas tax cuts: The sudden end of Kansas' aggressive income tax reductions serves as a cautionary tale for other GOP-dominated states about the pitfalls of moving too far too quickly … Legislators overrode Republican Gov. Sam Brownback's veto of a bill that largely rolls back the income tax cuts he championed in recent years. Income tax rates will rise, with a new top rate of 5.7 percent instead of the current 4.6 percent. The measure is designed to cover projected budget shortfalls totaling $889 million through June 2019

The state is ending an exemption for more than 330,000 farmers and business owners.

They concluded the cash-strapped state needed the extra revenue to fix the budget and raise additional funds for public schools.

In Missouri, the Republican-led Legislature enacted income tax cuts, and only if revenues grow, in what sponsoring state Sen. Will Kraus called a "totally different" approach than Kansas'.

"The people of Kansas, in my mind, are willing to pay for the services that they value," said Sen. Randall Hardy, a moderate Salina Republican who unseated a Brownback ally last year. "We're going to stop the hemorrhaging."

"We've been highly influenced by conservative policy think-tanks that encouraged us to keep cutting tax revenues in order to show a dynamic effect in the growth of our economy," said state Rep. Leslie Osborn, the Republican chairwoman of the Oklahoma House Appropriations Committee.

Bryan Lowry, at the Kansas City Star: These tax cuts, which Brownback had promised would lead to astronomical job growth, had really become politically toxic over the last four years. The governor promised to gain 25,000 private sector jobs a year during his re-election campaign and the state is nowhere close to achieving that. Kansas ranks 48th in the nation for private sector job growth for April 2016 to April 2017. The tax cuts did not pay for themselves.

Oh, and don't forget to blame someone else, just pick a villain from the GOP list...like immigrants:

At his campaign kickoff Thursday, Brownback made a point of hammering the moderate Republicans who voted for the tax increase, accusing them of the stealing from hard-working Kansans. He linked the tax increase to the amount of money the state spends on providing public services to illegal immigrants, citing figures from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center considers extremist.

NEW: I just found this great point by point break down from Brookings of the Brownback debacle. Another "supply side" failure:

1. Tax cuts do not guarantee economic growth. The Kansas experiment is a stunning rebuke of supply-side rhetoric put forth by tax-cut advocates like Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, who promised big economic gains. The Kansas tax cut resulted in no apparent growth effects.

2. Special tax rates for business activity mainly generate more tax-sheltering behavior and less revenue. A recent study found that Kansans found it advantageous to convert labor income into business income for tax purposes, even with a tax differential of less than 5 percentage points.

3. The Kansas experience is consistent with the view that people are more willing to pay higher taxes when they can see the link between tax revenues and the societal benefits that government provides. After experiencing the significant cuts to public spending, Kansans voted to oust some of the most conservative GOP legislators in the 2016 elections. In a May poll in Kansas, a bedrock Republican state, 59 percent of those surveyed preferred to solve the state’s budget problems with either tax increases or a combination of tax increases and spending cuts (rather than just through spending cuts).

The Bottom Line: 

The Brownback tax cuts were one of the cleanest experiments the country has ever had in measuring the effects of tax cuts on economic growth, and it showed that they were a failure. Congress can learn three lessons from this experience.

Kansas Supply Side Comeback Crashes.

Like all the other red state economies, tax and spending cuts have produced stagnant "comebacks" and proof beyond a shadow of a doubt supply side doesn't work. States that did have small surpluses came at the expense of defunding public investments and everything else.

The grand experiment, the Kansas Comeback, is exhibit A:

It’s been about six years since Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) announced his plan to conduct “a real-live experiment” with his state’s economy. The far-right Kansan, working with a GOP-led legislature, would cut taxes far beyond what the state could afford, slash public investments, and wait for prosperity to flourish across every corner of the state.

None of that has happened. Not only have Kansas’ job growth and economic growth lagged behind neighboring states, but a couple of years ago the state’s bond rating was downgraded because of the fiscal mess Brownback created.

Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum wrote last month: “This, of course, has caused conservatives to think long and hard about their contention that cutting taxes on the rich and slashing bloated budgets will supercharge the economy.

In 2012, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said of Brownback’s radical economic experiment, “This is exactly the sort of thing we want to do here, in Washington.” Oddly enough, I haven’t heard McConnell repeat this line lately.

Kansas Republicans protect vote by rejecting nearly 50,000 voters for state electoral offices.

Republicans can try desperately to make their case they're only trying to protect the integrity of elections and that "one fraudulent vote is one too many," but that all flies out the window with this startling action and admission that they are the party of suppression, no matter how you deny it.

Not real American like is it, in a representative democracy?

County election officials will count their votes for president, U.S. Senate and Congress but not their votes in state and local races or local ballot questions.

What could be wrong with that? That's not all, Kansas Republicans can pretty much game the political system in any way they want with this rather broad law:

Kansas law allows the regulations board to approve a temporary rule without a formal public hearing if an agency sees quick action as necessary to preserve “the public peace, health, safety or welfare.”

This is what happens when the Constitution leaves our right to vote up to the states.

About 17,000 people were in that category as of last week, but as many as 50,000 prospective voters could be affected in the November election.

Moral and Ethical Choice? Kansas Republican tax cuts Cut Children’s programs, road work, education funding.

It's coming Wisconsin....

Democrats keep waiting for that tipping point, when die hard Republican voters realize supply side economics doesn’t working. Don’t hold your breath for their moral enlightenment.

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback led the way, prompting similar cuts by Scott Walker, although technically, Walker cut college funding before Brownback. Even Republican legislators in Kansas are now hoping to reverse some of the cuts, like the ones Brownback (and Walker) made for farmers and manufacturing:

Some Republicans want to reverse a key policy that exempted 330,000 farmers and business owners from personal income taxes. Republicans in some other states have watched the Kansas tax-cutting experiment closely … a way to generate business investment and economic growth. But it hasn't worked out as envisioned and the state has struggled to balance its budget ever since.  

Again, failure just results in more cuts:

Brownback prefers the borrowing backed by part of the state's tobacco revenues, which now are set aside for children's programs.

The state Department of Transportation announced it would delay 25 major highway projects set to begin before July 2018 ... carry forward $17 million in immediate cuts ordered on state university campuses last month into the next fiscal year that begins in July.

Wisconsin State Sen. Alberta Darling exposed right wing thinking when a reporter asked if tax cuts fail, producing large deficits, what next?

Darling: "Well when you see that coming then you further have to reduce spending."

It's a no fail plan for failure. There's no down side to their argument. Failure is rewarded:

It was the fourth consecutive semiannual forecast to be more pessimistic than its predecessor. Tax collections have fallen short of expectations 11 of the past 12 months.

We're getting the same results in Walker's Wisconsin. And no lesson learned. What a surprise.

Kansas Republicans lash out, make it easy to Impeach Supreme Court Justices who "overstep their authority."

Wisconsin is enjoying an overtly partisan conservative activist State Supreme Court, one that works well with Gov. Scott Walker, a panting lap dog of an Attorney General, and a reckless majority of Republican lawmakers.

But that's not what's happening in Kansas, where the court still acts as a separate independent branch of government. That's about to changed, thanks to those "originalist" conservative guardians of the Constitution:

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports the state constitution currently uses high crimes and misdemeanors as grounds for removal from office. 

The new proposal would allow impeachment of Supreme Court justices if they usurp the authority of the Legislature, or for reckless judicial conduct, personal misconduct and failure to properly supervise judicial personnel.

These are amazing times. Justices working under the constant threat of job loss, over the slightest hint of dissent, is now on the legislative fast track. Their favorite excuse; "overstepping authority:"

The bill's sponsor, Republican Sen. Mitch Holmes, says the court has made several decisions recently that overstepped its authority, such as school funding rulings.

The fight over school funding is brutal. Massive tax cuts forced Republicans to take an ax to public education, which the State Supreme Court said was unconstitutional. That's when Republicans threatened to defund the entire court system if the justices didn't reverse their decision. They backed down, but came back with these gems:

Republicans have drafted bills calling for a system in which the governor would nominate and the State Senate would confirm justices. Republicans have also drafted bills calling for partisan election of justices.

But the court isn't backing down:

The Kansas Supreme Court threatened to shut down schools if lawmakers don't revamp the way the state funds public schools by July,

So now impeachment is on the table for anyone on the court who "oversteps their authority." The excuses are now piling up...

Kansas House Speaker Ray Merrick said the court was holding taxpayers and schoolchildren hostage. A fellow Republican, Sen. Jeff Melcher, called the decision a "temper tantrum. It's kind of one of those things, 'Give us the money, or the kid gets it.'"

Republican Gov. Sam Brownback called it a ruling from an "activist" court but added, "We will review this decision closely and work with the Legislature to ensure the continued success of our great Kansas schools.

This is the kind of fight we're going to see in every red state where the courts aren't in cahoots yet with the controlling right wing authority.   

Republicans in Kansas got caught violating the state constitution with cuts to school funding.

I know, they love the constitution…until they don’t. Then it’s time to change it or get around it.

They also don’t want to be on the hook if more kids go to school. No really, they said that.

AP: A district court panel in Kansas declared Friday that key parts of a new state law for funding public schools violate the state constitution and ordered an immediate increase in aid. Shawnee County District Court would force the state to provide between $46 million and $54 million in extra aid next week, distributing the money under an old formula that legislators junked.

But why did Kansas Gov. Brownback and GOP legislators hate the old formula? You won’t believe it…

The GOP-dominated Legislature disliked the old formula partly because it automatically left the state on the hook for additional spending if schools gained students, if more students had special needs or even if districts had major building projects.

In any other world people having families that send more kids to school would be a good thing. Not in Kansas. And ouch, more special needs kids.

"The opinion itself is, to put it as kindly as possible, utter nonsense," Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce, a Nickerson Republican said. Top Republicans also described the decision as highly political.

Those are reasons?

John Robb, a Newton attorney representing four school districts said, "The Legislature continues to try to skirt the constitution and not fund schools."

Kansas' supply side disaster for K-12 warning to voters in 2016.

The $126 million cuts to K-12 continues the school funding slide in Wisconsin, with more to come if republicans have their way. But check out what happened in Kansas when the state cut $51 million a little over a month ago in March for the current school year (on top of their past cuts):

Kansas shows us what could happen if Republicans win in 2016: At least 8 Kansas school districts recently announced that they’re starting summer break early this year … It’s because these schools ran out of money, thanks to state leaders’ decision to ax education spending midyear to plug an ever-widening hole in their budget. Kansas politicians ... may also be doing the rest of the country a favor, by giving us a preview of what might happen if Republicans control the White House and Congress after the 2016 ­election.

Supply Side Infallibility…as long as you continue to cut taxes and public services:

The consequences in Kansas, after all, are a result of fulfilling the great Laffer Curve dream that has Republican presidential hopefuls such as Marco Rubio, Scott Walker and Chris Christie all salivating: dramatic tax cuts, concentrated among those at the top, coupled with the promise that such action will, through trickle-down voodoo, increase tax revenue and boost economic growth.

Unconstitutional, but Appeal gives way to more Educational cuts:

Kansas’s elected officals have a decades-long history of shortchanging students, and the state has been subjected to multiple lawsuits over whether its funding levels violated the state constitution’s requirements for adequate and equitable public education spending. The most recent major case was filed in 2010 before Brownback took office. The state’s Supreme Court found school funding levels indeed to be unconstitutional ... the state appealed the decision and has since cut funding further. 

The results conservatives seem quite happy with?

For districts, that has meant permanently closing a school here, expanding class sizes there, eliminating a math and science teacher here, maybe instituting pay-to-play athletics there. Teachers in the schools that are closing early are hustling to revamp their curricula so they can still cover all the material the state requires. Students are feeling the heat, too. 

Wisconsin will follow Kansas Comeback into deficit black hole!!!

Supply-side Republican economics continues to fail miserably. You’d think it was designed to just that, so these penny pinching guardians of taxpayer money can make even more spending and tax cuts.

The “Kansas Comeback,” like the Wisconsin Comeback, is fraught with budgeting inconsistencies. I thought “borrowing” money from the state’s public pension fund was already determined to be a really bad idea? Guess not in Kansas. And that transportation fund Wisconsin voters constitutionally protected from other funding raids? Well, Kansas luckily doesn't have to worry about that Walker created problem, as they drain that to compensate for their last few tax cutting sprees:

AP: With Kansas facing a projected $279 million budget shortfall after enacting aggressive tax cuts, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback proposed to trim spending and divert funds for highway projects and public pensions to general government programs. The governor has the authority to order budget cuts for the state fiscal year that began in July and to divert $41 million in funds from the pension system for teachers and government workers.

Amazing Infallible Economics? It’s true, GOP policies can’t fail. If their austere tax and spending cuts fail - creating deficits from lower than expected revenues - they simply make more tax and spending cuts. See? Still, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has one major problem:  

The plan does not tackle an additional $436 million shortfall in the budget for the next fiscal year.

This will be fun to watch.

Daily Show's honest look at Gov. Brownback's Disastrous Supply Side Kansas Comeback!!!

U.S. News wrote a pathetic defense of Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback just days before The Daily Show offered up a much different but honest look at Brownback’s record. 

Here’s a short sample of that article praising Brownback's supply side, tax cut failure:

Then there’s Kansas, where Republican Gov. Sam Brownback has put the state on the path to abolishing its income tax. 

The modern Democratic coalition is based on the idea that the revenue the government collects will be spread around … a kind of “share the wealth” program on steroids ... which justifies the amount of money that the unions, the environmental groups, the trial lawyers and the civil rights groups take from their members to get Democrats elected in the first place.

If Brownback triumphs, the pie shrinks – which means there just won’t be as much taxpayer money to divide up in the future. So the Democratic coalition groups have to win and make sure no one ever tries to abolish a tax again.

A weird defense that doesn't have anything to do with supply side’s collapse: 

…left-liberal writers who are carrying water for his political opponents are burning the midnight oil finding ways to show the state’s historic 2012 and 2013 tax cuts are responsible for a so-called revenue shortfall that will eventually bankrupt the state. Brownback’s tax strategy …  leads to economic growth, creates new jobs, produces an environment in which new businesses start up and existing businesses expand and everyone. 

Those are all the things that have not happened. You've got to wonder how bad things have to get before Republicans get a clue:

If the Democrats can beat Brownback, and tie his defeat to tax cuts, they believe they can make Brownback the “poster child” for what not to do and force the GOP to come up with a whole new game plan going into 2016. 

State Rep. Duey Stroebel is right on board with Brownback’s failure:  

We can take an important step in that direction by repealing the antiquated, unequal and job-killing personal property tax. Every grocer, restaurant owner, contractor and many other business owners must face a tax on upgraded or expanded equipment to grow or update their business. The (personal property) tax is also expensive to administrate for both the taxpayer and the tax-collecting entity. Repealing the tax would help spur our state's economy, particularly among the types of small, Main Street businesses that are the engine of job growth. 

Brownback beat himself folks. Leave it to the Daily Show's Jessica Williams for an honest look at the Kansas Comeback:

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