A week after the New York Times editorial board took Oklahoma to task for the state’s failure to avoid a $1.3 billion—thus leaving the poorest in the state holding the bill—the Times has now put Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax policies in the crosshairs. The paper’s editorial, “Kansas Schools, Victims of Bad Tax Policy,” minced no words.
The Times opened by calling the theory that sweeping tax cuts generate revenue “the grand myth of modern Republican politics,” noting that the strategy has failed abysmally in Kansas. After being swept into office on a wave of Tea Party sentiment in 2012, Brownback set about enacting the largest tax cuts in the state’s history—a boon for the wealthiest citizens in Kansas that was meant to spur growth and send the economy skyrocketing.
Soon enough, the governor and legislature began gutting the state’s public school system to bolster plummeting revenue. The Times editorial board wrote, in part: “Even some Republican supporters of Mr. Brownback, finding their schoolchildren threatened by declining standards, are calling for the reversal of some of the tax cuts.”