The
Kansas experiment refers to
Kansas Senate Bill Substitute HB 2117, a bill signed into law in May 2012 by
Sam Brownback, governor of the state of
Kansas.
[1] It was one of the largest income tax cuts in the state's history,
[2] which Brownback believed would be a "shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy".
[3]
The cuts were based on model legislation published by the conservative
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC),
[4][5][6][7] supported by
supply-side economist Arthur Laffer,
[8] and anti-tax leader
Grover Norquist.
[9] The law cut taxes by US$231 million in its first year, and cuts were projected to total US$934 million after six years,
[10] by eliminating taxes on business income for the owners of almost 200,000 businesses and cutting individual
income tax rates.
[10] Brownback compared his tax policies with those of
Ronald Reagan, but also described them as "a real live experiment",
[11] and had predicted that by 2020 they would have created an additional 23,000 jobs.
[2]
However, by 2017 state revenues had fallen by hundreds of millions of dollars,
[12] causing spending on roads, bridges, and education to be slashed.
[13][14] With economic growth remaining consistently below average,
[15] the Republican Legislature of Kansas voted to roll back the cuts; although Brownback vetoed the repeal, the legislature succeeded in overriding his veto.
[16]
The Kansas experiment
[17] has also been called the "Great Kansas Tax Cut Experiment,"
[15] the "Red-state experiment,"
[18] "the tax experiment in Kansas,"
[19] and "one of the cleanest experiments for how tax cuts affect economic growth in the U.S."
[20]