How Tea Party tax cuts are turning Kansas into a smoking ruin

Politics
States Confront Wide Budget Gaps Even After Years of Recovery
By JULIE BOSMANJUNE 7, 2015

"CHICAGO — In Illinois, fights over the state budget and its $3 billion shortfall have hit such an impasse that Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, issued a dire warning last week that a “major, major restructuring of the government” was around the corner.

"In Kansas, centrist Republicans have joined Democrats in attributing the state’s $400 million budget gap to deep tax cuts passed in 2012 and 2013 at the urging of Gov. Sam Brownback, a conservative Republican.

"And in Louisiana, lawmakers in the Republican-controlled State Legislature are in a standoff with their party colleague Gov. Bobby Jindal as they struggle with a $1.6 billion shortfall.

"Though the national economy is in its sixth year of recovery from the recession, many states are still facing major funding gaps that have locked legislatures in protracted battles with governors. In some states, lawmakers have gone into overtime with unresolved budgets, special sessions and threats of widespread government layoffs. Only 25 states have passed budgets, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers, which tracks legislative activity.

"While some states led by Democrats are having budget problems, too, there are far more states where Republicans control both the legislature and the governor’s office: 23, compared with seven states controlled by Democrats. Some of the bitterest budget fights this year pit conservative Republicans against centrist Republicans over how to cut spending or raise taxes.

"Fallout from the budget battles, though unlikely to be felt soon, could well be significant. Taxes on income or commodities like cigarettes may go up in several states. School programs and class sizes could be affected if education funds are reduced. And some states may have to resort to layoffs or furloughs, potentially leading to slowdowns in government services.

"Many of the legislatures that are struggling with budgets can point to external forces, including slow economic recoveries and rising health care costs, for their woes. “This is very different from past recovery periods, where you had fairly robust revenue growth at the state level,” said Scott D. Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. “We’re not seeing enough revenue growth to solve some of the problems that we’re seeing.”

"But many others have their own policy decisions to blame, budget experts say. Longtime bipartisan neglect of pension obligations has caught up with lawmakers in Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and deep tax cuts in Republican-dominated states like Kansas, Louisiana and Wisconsin have contributed to budget shortfalls as economic growth has fallen short of projections.

“A lot of governors have cut their taxes with the hopes that that would bring increased economic activity and they could postpone painful decisions about spending reductions,” said Tracy Gordon, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in Washington. “But those increases in economic activity haven’t come to pass.”

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dbphoenix said:
How many decades before we move on from "supply side" economics?
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There are circumstances, long since passed but which could in theory return one day, where supply-side economics makes sense. It's a tool in the kit, don't toss it.

Anyway, have you read about Brownback's latest stunt, the threat to defund the Kansas judiciary? Lol, does that story go here, the Kansas becoming a smoking ruin thread, or under the wacky republicans thread?
: )
 
Ricter said:
There are circumstances, long since passed but which could in theory return one day, where supply-side economics makes sense. It's a tool in the kit, don't toss it.

Anyway, have you read about Brownback's latest stunt, the threat to defund the Kansas judiciary? Lol, does that story go here, the Kansas becoming a smoking ruin thread, or under the wacky republicans thread?
: )
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It's sort of an omnibus thing :)

As for the supply-side stuff, none of this will be resolved until we decide what kind of society we want, and given the divisions in the "we", I don't see a resolution until services are reduced so drastically that the people literally revolt. People have become so spoiled since WWII that few have any idea. Look, for example, what's going on with water. And yet they still pour it onto their lawns.

If we are not brutal about diagnosing what we are up against, then all of our resistance is futile. If we think that voting for Hillary Clinton … is really going to make a difference, then I would argue we don’t understand corporate power and how it works. If you read the writings of anthropologists, there are studies about how civilizations break down; and we are certainly following that pattern. Unfortunately, there’s nothing within human nature to argue that we won’t go down the ways other civilizations have gone down. The difference is now, of course, that when we go down, the whole planet is going to go with us.

Yet you rebel not only for what you can achieve, but for who you become. In the end, those who rebel require faith — not a formal or necessarily Christian, Jewish or Muslim orthodoxy, but a faith that the good draws to it the good. That we are called to carry out the good insofar as we can determine what the good is; and then we let it go. The Buddhists call it karma, but faith is the belief that it goes somewhere. By standing up, you keep alive another narrative. It’s one of the ironic points of life. That, for me, is what provides hope; and if you are not there, there is no hope at all.

--Chris Hedges
 
AAAintheBeltway said:
Seems ironic that the LA Times has to go all the way to Kansas to find economic policies to criticize.
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Actually they wouldn't have to go very far at all in most cases. Virtually every Republican governor whose State failed to expand medicaid serves an an equally perfect example of political, and financial malpractice. These governors were so derelict in their duties, so consistently lied, that they all belong in jail. They are just as worthy of doing prison time as a bunch of embezzlers -- more worthy actually, since they caused the citizens of their respective States, collectively, to lose billions and prevented more than two million people from accessing routine medical care. Shameful!!!
 
piezoe said:
Actually they wouldn't have to go very far at all in most cases. Virtually every Republican governor whose State failed to expand medicaid serves an an equally perfect example of political, and financial malpractice. These governors were so derelict in their duties, so consistently lied, that they all belong in jail. They are just as worthy of doing prison time as a bunch of embezzlers -- more worthy actually, since they caused the citizens of their respective States, collectively, to lose billions and prevented more than two million people from accessing routine medical care. Shameful!!!
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It's as if government has a job to do, goods and services to provide, like a vendor, and as if, like a vendor, government also has purchasing to do and is thus a customer to other vendors. Sometimes a big customer. Whose removal from an economy hurts: contraction, and failure to fill orders.
 
Ricter said:
It's as if government has a job to do, goods and services to provide, like a vendor, and as if, like a vendor, government also has purchasing to do and is thus a customer to other vendors. Sometimes a big customer. Whose removal from an economy hurts: contraction, and failure to fill orders.
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A national health care plan that was jammed down the country's throat with one of the most egregious lies this country has ever experienced.........and guess who piezoe thinks should be in jail.

Good grief.
 
Ricter said:
Politics
States Confront Wide Budget Gaps Even After Years of Recovery
By JULIE BOSMANJUNE 7, 2015

.... “But those increases in economic activity haven’t come to pass....”

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Of course not. These supply side economic hypotheses --i.e., that the way to help the lower middle class is to make rich people richer -- were disproved years ago. What we need is better educated Fried Chicken Franchise owners, i.e., Republicans. But sadly we're going to find it difficult to find any, because although the democrats started the deterioration in U.S. public education in the 1960's, the Republicans seem bent on finishing it off entirely. While we may have rotten schools, Republicans have at least a few achievements they can point to: we have some of the best fried chicken and junk food anywhere in the world.
 
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Six years running with keynesian policies and zero interest rates. Can't stop! It needs more time! More time! ---piezoe
 
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