Brownback is in denial about tax increases

Nobody has to buy what Gov. Sam Brownback was peddling Tuesday about the $384 million tax plan not being a tax increase. But all Kansans will have to pay higher sales tax as of next month on whatever they buy, including groceries.

He can keep arguing that the 2012 tax plan cancels out the 2015 tax hike, equaling a net tax cut of $729 million, but it won’t make his claim either believable or true. Many of the conservative legislators Brownback manipulated – some would say bullied – into voting for the tax solution last week clearly saw it for the historic tax hike that it was, as have tax analysts inside and outside of Kansas.

Nor is it likely that his assurances will be persuasive to Kansans paying higher tobacco and liquor taxes or newly unable to itemize some deductions.

The 380,000 low-income Kansans Brownback touted as being freed of income taxes by the bill? They won’t be until tax year 2016, and any action to reduce food sales tax was delayed until at least next year.

And that “glide path to zero” income tax that the governor promised all Kansans three years ago, saying it would catapult Kansas to the top of the economic growth charts? Progress down that path has been postponed indefinitely for most Kansans who fall in the middle-income range, because further cuts are now dependent on growth in tax collections.

Meanwhile, some 330,000 small businesses will continue to pay no state income tax, though that perk of Brownback’s 2012 tax cuts has failed both the job-creation and fairness tests.

It’s clear from legislative and outside analysis that the benefits since 2012 have been uneven at best, favoring top earners and business owners while the tax burden disproportionately has shifted to those who earn less.

But Brownback isn’t budging on his belief in the supply-side gospel of economist Arthur Laffer, whose $75,000 consulting contract with the state set this boondoggle in motion.

“What we’re trying to do is create a pro-growth tax policy and get completely off income taxes altogether,” Brownback said Tuesday.

Never mind that Kansas has lagged the nation since 2012 in even the two categories Brownback boasted about, private-sector job growth and personal income growth, as well as most others.

The governor also seemed badly out of touch with reality in blaming the pitifully outnumbered Democrats in the Legislature for anything, and for acting as if school districts are in a bind through their own fault rather than the state’s.

And he’s alone in believing the state’s fiscal problems are over. If sales or other taxes must be hiked again in 2016, will Brownback also deny those are tax increases?

If only Kansas could use Brownback’s resolve and denial to balance its budget and pay its bills.

For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published June 17, 2015 at 7:06 PM with the headline "Brownback is in denial about tax increases."