Sam Brownback is a harbinger of national doom: Bleeding Kansas’ scary lesson for America
"Most humiliating of all for Brownback? In this heavily Republican state, Barack Obama is outpolling him by double digits, with 28 percent of Kansas residents pronouncing themselves “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the president’s job performance.
One cannot overstate just how badly Brownback and his pet Republican far-right legislature have wrecked Kansas in just a few years. The governor came into office in early 2011 promising to turn the state into a “real live experiment” for trickle-down economics that involved cutting tax rates to goose economic growth, which would fill the state’s coffers with so much revenue that Kansans would be literally swimming through seas of cash to get to Jayhawks basketball games. In other words, the usual supply-side plans that conservatives cling to no matter how many times they have crashed and burned at the national level.
To the surprise of absolutely no one who lived through the 1980s under Reagan or the 2000s under George W. Bush, Brownback’s economic plans have not worked out. This year the state found itself with a budget deficit of somewhere around $600 million. It has an annual job-growth rate almost four percentage points below the nationwide average. In June, after an exceptionally long legislative, Brownback signed a bitterly fought-over budget that requires the state to slash education funding and raid its highway fund in order to bring it into balance. Enjoy your potholes, Kansas!"
