‘Daily Show’ mocks Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax cuts

“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” skewered Gov. Sam Brownback in a five-minute feature titled “Laboratories of Fiscal Disaster” on Thursday night.

The Comedy Central satirical news show played clips of Brownback on MSNBC in 2012 touting his plan to sharply reduce income tax cuts as “a real live experiment.”

“You know how some political ideas sound great in theory and you think, man, if only we could test these theories on a giant experiment involving millions of people’s lives. Eh, turns out Kansas,” quipped host Jon Stewart as he introduced the segment.

John Milburn, spokesman for the Brownback campaign, called the report “liberal” and said it reeked of “condescending, smug arrogance.” He also noted that several individuals interviewed were active supporters of Davis.

“In 2010 former senator and fetus whisperer Sam Brownback was elected governor of Kansas and he had a dream … a boring white guy dream,” said correspondent Jessica Williams, who traveled to Kansas for the feature.

Martin Dickinson, a tax law professor at the University of Kansas, told Williams that the state took in $680 million less in the first full year of the Brownback tax plan, which cuts income taxes and eliminates the tax for business owners with sole proprietorships.

“That’s a lot of money in Kansas,” he said.

Williams interviewed former Sen. Wint Winter Jr., a Republican backing Democrat Paul Davis for governor.

“Are you sure you’re a Republican? Because you don’t sound like one,” she said to Winter after he called Brownback’s economic policies a train wreck.

She asked him to name three hip-hop artists, and when Winter could only name one, Tupac Shakur, she concluded he was a Republican.

The show cited a Kansas City Star article saying Kansas trails the nation in job growth.

“Just because we got a tax cut didn’t mean we had to hire more people. We put that money in our pocket,” said Pat Ross, a Douglas County farmer who said he voted for Brownback in 2010. “Why hire people that you don’t need?”

Williams suggested that Ross could become more creative in his hiring practices and offered the idea that he could hire a person to dance on tractors.

The satirical feature hammers Brownback on the impact of the tax cuts to education and transportation funding, both talking points for the Davis campaign.

“The segment highlights some very serious realities in Kansas … three credit downgrades and (a projected) billion-dollar budget deficit are no laughing matter,” said Chris Pumpelly, the Davis campaign’s spokesman, in an e-mail.

Kansas was also mocked last month on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With Jon Oliver,” during which Oliver highlighted the state’s plans to auction off sex toys because an owner of a chain of sex toy stores failed to pay his taxes.

This story was originally published October 17, 2014 at 12:11 PM with the headline "‘Daily Show’ mocks Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax cuts."