State of Kansas Finances

[shocka khan]

House overrode the veto with the exact number of votes needed to override.

Still sweeping money out of KDOT to get the bills paid. That's gonna come back to bite us down the road.

Monkey see, monkey do.......

http://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2015/11/25/another-48m-taken-from-roadwork-steered-to-plug-deficit/

Y'all can hope that Trump will make Brownback the ambassador to Waste Management and send him to the biggest landfill in the world, after all, that's what he's turned Kansas into.

[shockmonster]

House overrode the veto with the exact number of votes needed to override.

Still sweeping money out of KDOT to get the bills paid. That's gonna come back to bite us down the road.

They knew how many votes they needed and people who in the past put ideology above anything else actually backed down because of Brownback. Dan Hawkins who never voted for a tax increase said that it was obvious that Brownback wasn't going to allow (veto instead) any kind of tax increase and even he thought that the tax loophole for small businesses didn't work so he cried "uncle".

[giskard]

House overrode the veto with the exact number of votes needed to override.

Still sweeping money out of KDOT to get the bills paid. That's gonna come back to bite us down the road.

Just hope it doesn't bite anyone ON the road.

[Aargh]

I'm of the opinion that we need to find a funding method to replace the $1 billion+ that was transferred from KDOT.

When the state's economy didn't grow to replace the lost revenue from the tax cuts, Kansas was put in a multi-billion dollar financial hole. The state wasn't flush with funds, other than for maintaining roads, before the tax cuts, and those tax cuts eliminated $600 - $700 million a year from state revenues for a period of 4 years. Economic growth was virtually non-existent during those years. Then there were depressed prices for oil and agriculture products which reduced revenues.

I kind of like having decent roads and roads are clearly a state obligation. Just because people don't like paying taxes doesn't mean there is no good use or real need for them. We had a failed experiment that cost the state billions. Now we need to make up that revenue loss. Those who wanted to cut spending to balance the budget were either unable or unwilling to find ways to do that. That leads me to believe that spending is about as low as even ultra-conservative legisltors want to take it.

I'd support a fuel tax to replace the funds taken from KDOT. Find an amount that's "comfortable" as an operating cushion for the department and charge a fuel tax to be collected until that amount is reached. Those using the roads the most are those who cause most of the expense of providing and maintaining them, so that would be a fair tax.

[wufan]

I'm of the opinion that we need to find a funding method to replace the $1 billion+ that was transferred from KDOT.

When the state's economy didn't grow to replace the lost revenue from the tax cuts, Kansas was put in a multi-billion dollar financial hole. The state wasn't flush with funds, other than for maintaining roads, before the tax cuts, and those tax cuts eliminated $600 - $700 million a year from state revenues for a period of 4 years. Economic growth was virtually non-existent during those years. Then there were depressed prices for oil and agriculture products which reduced revenues.

I kind of like having decent roads and roads are clearly a state obligation. Just because people don't like paying taxes doesn't mean there is no good use or real need for them. We had a failed experiment that cost the state billions. Now we need to make up that revenue loss. Those who wanted to cut spending to balance the budget were either unable or unwilling to find ways to do that. That leads me to believe that spending is about as low as even ultra-conservative legisltors want to take it.

I'd support a fuel tax to replace the funds taken from KDOT. Find an amount that's "comfortable" as an operating cushion for the department and charge a fuel tax to be collected until that amount is reached. Those using the roads the most are those who cause most of the expense of providing and maintaining them, so that would be a fair tax.

Well said!

[RoyalShock]

I'm glad they got something done. I'm a little troubled by a lot of the jubilation I'm seeing, especially from those in education, now that a lot of small business owners (hardly considered wealthy) and their families are going to have significantly less income. Their salaries are largely tied to their business profits, which take a huge hit when their taxes are increased.

I'm not saying this didn't need to happen (it absolutely did), but let's not be so quick and excited to congratulate each other and party in the streets.

[shocka khan]

Your villiage idiot is in the news again:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-19/the-kansas-supply-side-experiment-unravels

Looks like no one ever bothered to define what success is, so perhaps in a couple of years, after the pain of this disaster recedes, the nation's only mentally-challenged gov can come out of the woodwork, do a photo-op with Arthur Laffer, and declare victory.

[shocka khan]

I'm not saying this didn't need to happen (it absolutely did), but let's not be so quick and excited to congratulate each other and party in the streets.

With all due respect, the brain-dead cheerleaders who wrought this disaster certainly partied in the streets when they rammed it through.

Brownback even made Arthur Laffer honorary 'King for a day'.

I told you shortly after that happened what the outcome would be. Anyone who has followed Laffer and has the ability to think critically could have told you how this would wind up.

Even Poppy Bush, at his advanced age can now say 'I told you so.'

[SB Shock]

Things could be a lot worse - go look at what happening in Illinois.

[shocka khan]

Things could be a lot worse - go look at what happening in Illinois.

And it took them years (20 or 30) to get there.

In this case, it look one incompetent governor less than 8 years.

If you voted for him the last time around, I wouldn't be too proud of your statement. Kinda' reminds me of what my father told me: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

[shocka khan]

WWKD?

Kasich did not embrace Arthur Laffer, but the jury's still out there, evidently.....

http://www.dispatch.com/news/20170620/kasich-argues-ohio-is-not-kansas-says-he-wont-roll-back-business-tax-cut

Pretty sad when moderate republican governors point to the dumpster fire and promise 'it won't happen here.'

Just for the record, I believe Kasich. He's a pretty honest guy, and appears to be smart enough to know when he's in over his head.

He would have made a good nominee.

[Boss1786]

The biggest fatal flaw of theories is the unpredictability of human behavior. These cuts should have never been "across-the-board" cuts that did nothing but put money in owners pockets to increase wealth and social standings.

The tax cuts should have been earmarked only for those companies that actively expanded #1)their number of total employees and #2) improved or new assets to support additional staffing.

I am curious how much Brownback's family wealth increased during this I'll thought out experiment?

[wufan]

The biggest fatal flaw of theories is the unpredictability of human behavior. These cuts should have never been "across-the-board" cuts that did nothing but put money in owners pockets to increase wealth and social standings.

The tax cuts should have been earmarked only for those companies that actively expanded #1)their number of total employees and #2) improved or new assets to support additional staffing.

I am curious how much Brownback's family wealth increased during this I'll thought out experiment?

I'm totally down with the theory of how this works. Either the theory or the implementation went poorly. I'm inclined to go with the latter.

[shockmonster]

I'm totally down with the theory of how this works. Either the theory or the implementation went poorly. I'm inclined to go with the latter.

You are not wrong.

There were several problems with the tax cuts according to former State Rep. Mark Hutton, a conservative contractor and business owner from Wichita.

1. These types of tax cuts will never bring lots of businesses/jobs coming to Kansas to solve tax problems (Brownback originally sold these increased jobs and business in KS. as increasing taxes enough to eliminate or close to, income taxes). Hutton admitted that he was for these tax cuts originally for this reason but this was never going to happen.
2. Soon after he saw it wasn't going to work as planned, Hutton was for a compromise and giving tax breaks according to how many employees a business employed. A minimum of at least one employee had to be hired and taxes would be decreased according to number of employees (with a cap). Small businesses who had no employees would receive no tax breaks.
3. The problem is that a Brownback said he would veto any changes in his tax plan. This was early enough to limit the damage to Kansas finances.
4. As our finances and credit kept going down, our economy was damaged because businesses were not going to come to Kansas with the current state of our finances.

Now our state is in such a state that a larger tax increase was necessary than if Brownback had been willing to work with Hutton several years ago. This is almost all on Brownback with many conservatives willing to back Hutton's ideas and compromise at that time.

[CBB_Fan]

The problem with the tax cut is the blind assumption that we were on the right-half of the Laffer curve, and the refusal to change once that was shown to be the case. We could have used reason and evidence to figure out an optimal tax rate, or adjusted the experiment once our hypothesis (cut taxes = more income) was proven false.

The Laffer curve exists, but the Reagan, Bush, and Brownback tax cuts have shown that we are not on the right-half of the curve. Each time we cut taxes, we cut revenue. This is clear evidence that our current tax model is on the left side of the Laffer curve.

That doesn't mean we should raise taxes by itself, it just means that raising taxes will raise revenue. But it does mean that cutting taxes while raising spending (with the assumption that tax cuts raise the money) is economically foolish. Continuing to cut taxes while raising spending is even more foolish, and ignoring the fact that the state continues to come in under budget is more foolish yet.

Obviously taxes are more complex than "more money raised = good" and the goal of the government is not to extract the most money possible. There are legitimate arguments for high or low taxes or taxes of this form or that form.

There is no legitimate argument for simply setting taxes low and ignoring the impact to the budget. That creates unplanned deficits and shortfalls for absolutely zero reason or upside. Low taxes could be good for all sorts of reasons (less administration needed, more incoming business) but "higher government revenue" is simply not one of those reasons, and acting like it is has cost Kansas and the US.