Reveal Navigation OptionsThe Wall Street Journalshow search Close SearchSubmit Search 125080 OPINION Why Kansas Drives Liberals CrazySam Brownback cut taxes to stop the state’s economic decline. Big spenders in both parties won’t forgive him. ENLARGE Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback describes his plans on getting people to move to Kansas while speaking at rally on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2014, at Capital City Oil in Topeka, Kan. ASSOCIATED PRESS By ALLYSIA FINLEY Oct. 26, 2014 7:20 p.m. ET 299 COMMENTS Wichita, Kan. During the 1850s, Kansas turned into a battleground for a proxy war between abolitionists and slavery supporters. Today, Kansas has become the flash point in another national debate, this one over government’s role in promoting growth. Two years ago conservative Republican Gov. Sam Brownback spearheaded perhaps the most aggressive tax cuts in the nation. Establishment Republicans in Kansas mutinied and now have joined Mr. Brownback’s Democratic challenger, Paul Davis , the state House minority leader. By toppling the governor, they hope to marginalize conservatives in Kansas and discredit tax reform in the states. Economic growth in Kansas has trailed the Great Plains region and nation for decades. Between 1982 and 1997, Kansas’ private GDP growth ranked 43rd in the country—ahead of only West Virginia, Oklahoma, Montana, Louisiana, North Dakota, Wyoming and Alaska. While some of those states have since boomed, Kansas has plodded along. Between 1997 and 2012, Kansas’ private economy grew by 4% a year compared with 4.3% nationally, 4.9% in Colorado and Nebraska, 5.3% in Oklahoma, and 6.1% in Texas. Though stereotyped as a farm state, Kansas was once an industrial powerhouse. Around the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport, you’ll still see plants for Hawker Beechcraft, Cessna, Spirit AeroSystems, Airbus and Learjet. But aerospace companies have been scaling back production. Hawker Beechcraft has laid off about 4,000 workers in Wichita since 2008, while Cessna has shed about 7,000 jobs. In January 2012, Boeing said it will close its 85-year-old plant in Wichita and move work to San Antonio, Oklahoma City and Puget Sound. Wichita, the state’s largest city, has thus become more dependent on small businesses and retail for growth. Families who live in rural communities travel to Wichita to dine, shop or catch a minor-league baseball game. Trouble is, these rural communities are emptying out. Seventy-seven of the state’s 105 counties have lost population over the last decade. Between 2000 and 2010, a net 55,000 people left Kansas—most going to Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas—according to IRS data. Politicians of both parties have sought to manage the state’s sclerosis by spending more on welfare, economic development and schools, explains Kansas Policy Institute President Dave Trabert. They raised taxes to finance the spending. Wichita’s commercial-property taxes rank fifth-highest among the country’s 50 largest cities. Before Mr. Brownback’s tax cuts, Kansas had higher personal and corporate income-tax rates than all of its neighbors except Nebraska. Enter the governor’s “experiment” to jump-start growth by cutting taxes. His revenue-neutral plan slashed income-tax rates across the board, nixed all itemized deductions, exempted small business income and capped state spending growth at 2% annually. Little did he know he would trigger a civil war in his party. House Republicans passed a less aggressive version of the plan, but moderate Republican senators who were used to controlling the legislative agenda revolted. They tried to restore the tax carve-outs and strike the spending cap. They figured the governor wouldn’t sign a bill that caused a deficit, yet they still wanted to claim credit for voting to cut taxes. “They were double-dealing,” says Kansas Chamber of Commerce President Mike O’Neal, then the House speaker. After a state House and Senate conference committee unexpectedly agreed on a bill, Senate President Steve Morris tried to squash the compromise on the chamber’s floor. So House Republicans quickly approved the Senate bill and then tried to negotiate with the Senate leader to pass the compromise. According to Mr. O’Neal, House Republican leaders offered additional school aid and property-tax relief to win the Senate leader’s support. Mr. Morris wouldn’t budge. Then Mr. Brownback called the Senate’s bluff and signed the bill, tax carve-outs and all. The legislation eliminated the top 6.45% bracket for income over $30,000 while cutting rates on individuals earning more than $15,000 to 4.8% from 6.25%, and to 2.7% from 3.5% for those making less. The bill also zeroed out the income tax on small businesses. Opinion Journal Video Editorial Writer Allysia Finley on why Gov. Sam Brownback and Sen. Pat Roberts’s re-election bids matter so much to the GOP. Photo credit: Associated Press. “In the legislative process, you get what the legislature sends you,” Mr. Brownback says in an interview. “You don’t get to pick what you’re going to do. It’s an either/or. I’d have liked to have [the reform] the way we proposed it, but we didn’t get it that way.” But the GOP Senate saboteurs got their just deserts. Outraged by their machinations, the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Mr. Brownback backed conservatives in primary challenges against the senators. Four of the targeted GOP Senators, including Mr. Morris and Jean Schodorf—who is now running for secretary of state as a Democrat—lost. Two others, including Senate Vice President John Vratil, retired. They are now backing Mr. Davis, along with nearly 500 other former local or state GOP lawmakers. According to Mr. O’Neal, the Davis “Republicans”—some have switched parties—are mostly “disaffected or grumpy losers” who are upset “that their constituents, economy and Kansas politics have changed.” A popular narrative in the national media is that Kansas is revolting against conservative governance, as reflected by the unexpectedly tight Senate and gubernatorial races. The Real Clear Politics polling average has the governor’s race a tie. Three-term Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts is running neck-and-neck with his independent challenger, Greg Orman, a former Democrat. Yet Mr. Orman isn’t running as a liberal—he’s running as a populist against the Washington establishment. And Mr. Roberts is struggling to shore up conservatives who backed his primary challenger, Milton Wolf. Mr. Roberts won the primary by a mere 20,000 votes. As for Mr. Brownback, there is little doubt this election is a referendum on his governorship and tax cuts. Mr. Davis hardly speaks about anything else. But his campaign has been aided by marginalized Republican politicians angry that the state is becoming more conservative. This is why you don’t hear the Brownback opposition campaigning for higher taxes on the wealthy or other liberal hobby horses. At a debate in Wichita last week, Mr. Davis even ran to the right of the governor—who proclaimed Kansas “the renewable state”—on exploiting the state’s fossil fuels. Instead, anti-Brownbackers are howling that the tax cuts will blow a hole in the budget (which was the goal of the sabotage) and force cuts to education. Liberals in the media have thrown fuel on the bonfire. Consider these recent headlines: “The Great Kansas Tea Party Disaster” (Rolling Stone); “The relentless lies of Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback” (Kansas City Star); “Charlatans, Cranks and Kansas” (New York Times). But if the tax cuts have been so disastrous, why won’t Mr. Davis pledge to repeal them? Instead, he merely promises to stop further rate cuts from taking effect. Mr. Brownback is in trouble mainly because the media are amplifying the Democratic distortions, like a claim by teachers unions that the governor signed the “largest single cut to education in Kansas history.” School funding in Kansas is actually at an all-time high. Total per-pupil spending has increased to $12,960 from $12,283 over four years. The governor has also struggled to communicate Kansas’ modest, but real, progress. Since the tax cuts took effect in January 2013, private job growth in Kansas has surpassed growth in Nebraska and Iowa after trailing for the prior decade. Services (i.e., small businesses) account for 95% of the state’s growth in private jobs, compared with about 70% in Iowa and Nebraska. Last year, Kansas’ private GDP growth exceeded the nation’s and growth in high-tax states like California, New York, Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey. But maybe Gov. Brownback’s biggest albatross is his sincerity about promoting growth and reforming government. Unlike Ohio Gov. John Kasich —who is cruising to re-election after betraying his own collective-bargaining reforms and caving to liberal pressure to expand Medicaid—Mr. Brownback has stuck to his conservative principles. The Kansas governor says that he has no regrets about championing tax reform or backing conservative challengers in the 2012 Senate primaries. If Mr. Brownback loses, it will be because he’s not a charlatan or crank. Ms. Finley writes editorials for the Journal. An earlier version of this article misstated the newspaper that ran “The relentless lies of Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback.” 125080 Log in to comment There are 299 comments. NewestOldestReader Recommended James Ransom2 days ago The Republican dropouts in Kansas are mostly sore losers who had expected to continue the good old boy routine of tax and spend. They were not producing growth of our economy. They were really Dems long before they found out that the public had them pegged, and threw them out. Now the need in Kansas is for voters to understand what is really going on (Ms. Finleys explanation is the right one, but needs wider circulation in this state). Lets hope they get the message and return Sam Brownback for another term, where I am confident that the growth measures he champions will give us a badly needed Kansas renaissance. Robert Eisenhauer2 days ago Republican politicians angry that the state is becoming more conservative. Few are more murderous and robbing than National Democrats. And few are more treasonous and cowardly than National Republicans. What is an American to do? Vote only for True Americans like Sam Brownback if youre lucky enough to see one on your ballot. John Cabler2 days ago @Robert Eisenhauer Lanier? Is that you? Donald Hartman2 days ago @ken rodgers You must live in a vacuum. 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Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 10:39:20 +0000
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