Brownback 2016!
This, from The National Review in 2014, is fairly amusing given how things played out:
Sam Brownback might not be a household name yet, but Grover Norquist says that’s going to change in 2015. The Kansas governor, who ran a short presidential bid in 2008 and served in the Senate for a decade and a half, has a big fan in the Americans for Tax Reform head. Norquist tells National Review Online that Brownback is strategically positioned for a 2016 presidential bid, and that he’ll be a competitive candidate.
One thing Norquist likes: Brownback’s politically aggressive governorship. When he won the governorship in 2010, Brownback inherited a state legislature composed of what Norquist calls a conservative House and a Republican-but-insufficiently-conservative Senate.
What isn’t amusing his how Brownback created a budgetary clusterfuck by cutting taxes on wealthy Kansans. When the Laffer Curve snake oil predictably failed, it was less than funny when he stuck his state’s poor and middle class with a HUGE tax increase in the form of the country’s highest and most regressive sales tax.
Brownback is the final absolute proof that Reaganomics does not work.
I am going with the guy that wants solar lasers in space to fight the war on Terror.
Seriously. Bicklemyer.
The sales tax is high at 6.5%, but is not the highest.
What has yet to be seen is whether Norquist considers taxes that hit the poor hardest hunky-dory.
Well, Norquist was half right. Brownback is quite well-known now.
As Geezer pointed out, it is nowhere near the highest. Check out Minnesota.
What you didn’t mention is that Kansas went from 6.3 to 6.5. That’s hardly a massive tax hike. I am not justifying a tax increase, but a 3 percent increase is hardly worth your hand wringing.
As for Reaganomics, your Andrew Cuomo is proving it right. Are not his tax policies similar?
You also misrepresented the Laffer curve. It’s been proven so often that it’s not even controversial in economics. There’s a point on both sides of the curve 0% and 100% where effectively no taxes are collected. Somewhere there’s a point where revenue is maximized. If you go higher revenue falls. If you go lower, revenue increases. The reverse is also true if you are below the Laffer line. It is just like the prices on the demand curve. Some like Norquist seem to say whenever you cut taxes, revenue increases. It usually does because our taxes are so high generally. That’s not the economic absolute.
^^This right here is why this bullshit Laffer curve still has any currency. This fool has no clue about economics OR other states’ tax policy and yet spins up this incoherent crap to pretend he does.
Seriously — if the Laffer curve worked, Kansas would be rolling in money, rather than struggling to balance its budget and having to increase their taxes (instead of by the magical growth that is promised by Laffer). Louisiana also has a pretty big hole after stupid tax cuts, as does West Virginia. New Jersey too — who keeps facing reductions in their bond ratings. Minnesota, however, raised its taxes on the wealthy AND they are have a fast-growing economy and low unemployment rate. None of the tax cutting states can claim that.
A minor correction, I used a 2012 table. The current sales tax rate is 6.15 not 6.3 cents. Change that to a 6 percent tax hike. It is hardly a massive tax hike. People will hardly notice it.
Cassandra, read my comment please, then comment on it not your preconceived idea of what I said.
Blast Norquist if you like, but the Laffer curve is defined as I said it. If a tax rate is below the curve, you lose money cutting it. If it is above the curve, you gain money from growth. It is not magic. It takes a couple of years to fully realize. Brownback was below the line. He proved curve works on both sides
The Laffer curve has not been “proven” to do anything, as it is nothing but a statement of the obvious. The reason the curve is useless is that neither axis is calibrated — that is, the curve doesn’t say where the peak is. As a result, virtually every Republican believes it advocates always cutting taxes.
Except people who buy groceries. While most state sales taxes exempt groceries, Brownback leaves them in.
Hypocrite.
This tax continues to raise taxes on the poorest of Kansasans — who also pay a tax on food and live with other local sales taxes in addition to this. So Kansas continues to burden the poorest of its citizens rather than make those with the money pay their fair share.
Here we have Kansas providing irrefutable proof that David’s “Club for Growth” Laffer Curve based bullshit has utterly failed as an economic policy – and yet he defends it.
100% faith based.
Cassandra, read my comment please,
You can save your exasperation for when you actually read what is written here AND you are not here defending your party’s most ridiculous ideas and hypocrisies. The Laffer curve doesn’t work and there is no proof of it. Full Stop. If tax cuts paid for themselves, then Kansas would not be underwater, and neither would places like Louisiana or West Virginia.
Nice try at barbering the truth, David. Arthur Laffer himself promised the gains in Kansas would be immediate. Look it up.
Conservative “economics” is a fraud, and always has been, because it was pursued by people with an anti-Communist agenda. They were never interested in the truth — they were interested in protecting the status quo. And so are you.
“Brownback was below the line. He proved curve works on both sides”
You mean he intentionally put the state in an extreme deficit situation? Or was he just stupid. Perhaps he was just attempting to validate the Laffer Curve on the backs of the public?
Please note that David is using a new iteration of the defense of utter bullshit. The defense has been: “It will work, but taxes have to be cut further.”
The defense has become: “”It will work, but taxes have to be cut by just the right amount.”
This iteration is a case study in cognitive dissonance. He simply cannot accept the truth because it would cause a cascading cognitive meltdown.
According to a Republican, the right amount of taxes is zero.
That is exactly the income tax rate that Browback says will unleash the Laffer Curve Magic on Kansas. You’d have to be a stone cold idiot to still adhere to this nonsense.
Except all they’ve actually done is shift the tax burden from the rich to the middle- and lower classes.
It seems like Kansas has a negative tax rate, with the way they hand out money to the rich folk (i.e. pork barrel spending…)
That’s no way to balance a budget…