If Donald Trump plans to do to the entire country what Governor Sam Brownback (R-KS) did for the state of Kansas, we’re all in a lot of trouble. But, predictably, Fox News host Neil Cavuto didn’t mention the fiscal harm Brownback’s trickle-down economics have caused his state when he visited Fox News to promote Trump’s tax cuts.
Mother Jones has some back story about Brownback:
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, launched an "experiment" in conservative policy after he was elected in 2010, drastically slashing the state's income taxes under the assumption that the move would kick-start Kansas' economy and rev up job creation. With help from Arthur Laffer, Ronald Reagan's mastermind of trickle-down economics, Brownback convinced lawmakers in the state to cut personal income tax rates across the board and eliminate the top tax bracket, with further reductions to come. Kansas also completely erased the income tax bills for the owners of certain "small" businesses, totaling 330,000 by this year and including a host of subsidiaries of Wichita-based Koch Industries. The Koch-funded organization Americans for Prosperity helped Brownback push the bill and has remained a staunch defender of the changes. The tax cuts were sold by Brownback with the idea that they would pay for themselves when a renewed economy boosted state revenues despite the lower rates.
Four years after those tax cuts first went into effect, the opposite has occurred. The promised explosion of private-sector growth hasn't come to pass, as the state's economy has generally lagged the rest of the nation. In March, the Kansas Department of Labor reported, the state had only 800 more private-sector jobs than a year prior. The loss of tax revenue has decimated the state budget, creating a fiscal crisis necessitating drastic cuts, since the state, unlike the federal government, can't run a deficit. As the Kansas City Star's editorial board recently highlighted, so far this fiscal year, Kansas is $420 million short of the revenue it had the year Brownback's tax cuts first went into effect.
Not surprisingly, Cavuto didn’t say a word about Brownback’s trickle-down failure in Kansas. Instead, Cavuto allowed Brownback to argue that more of the same is what is needed for the rest of us.
Cavuto said Trump's team "wants to hit the ground running and they have given him a lot of recommendations, including. ‘Get those tax cuts going fast, get them in there quickly.’" Cavuto asked, "Are you in that camp?" As if he didn’t know.
Sure enough, Brownback said, "Absolutely.” He added, “What we've got to do is get those tax cuts in and, Neil, there's one they can do that we've done before: Just lower that tax rate on repatriation of foreign dollars into the United States. We did this before, it’ll bring a trillion dollars into the U.S. economy."
At best, that’s debatable.
But Cavuto did not challenge Brownback, even as he claimed that would “generate more tax dollars for the U.S. government because that money's just sitting overseas and can't come home, and then once the money comes home, it starts working in the private sector."
Instead, they moved on to talk up Trump’s plan to repeal Obamacare, except for allowing children to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26 and the ban on excluding pre-existing conditions. Yet both Cavuto and Brownback conveniently ignored how, without the individual mandate and without the subsidies, premiums are likely to soar.
Yet, Cavuto gave Brownback a seal of approval for praising Trump’s “pragmatic” approach. "Well put," Cavuto said as he closed the discussion.
Watch this bad omen below, from the November 12, 2016 Cost of Freedom.
Anytime Congress cuts federal spending and imposes unfunded federal mandates on state, city and local goverments, YOUR STATE, CITY AND LOCAL TAXES — ESPECIALLY PROPERTY TAXES AND SALES TAXES — SKYROCKET INTO OUTER SPACE!
’Nuff said.
Their justification is that leaving the rich with more of their money will lead to more investment in productive enterprises and in turn to increased jobs. The reality is that the rich will spend their money on whatever takes their fancy, be it McMansions, overseas travel or bottled Bohemian bats.
‘Job-Creators’ invest in businesses not because they have the wherewithal or they just love making work for the poor unemployed, but because they see opportunities to make more money. It doesn’t even need to be their money – finance is always available for sound projects.
Increasing the spending power of those at the bottom or middle of the pile, thereby creating demand, is the key to business growth. Why is this so bloody hard for the right to understand?
“The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others… The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”
- Henry A. Wallace, 1944
http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm
Hmmm… Did Wallace predict the rise of both Trump and Fox News hand in hand?
My favorite thought from his 70+ year old editorial:
“As long as scientific research and inventive ingenuity outran our ability to devise social mechanisms to raise the living standards of the people, we may expect the liberal potential of the United States to increase. If this liberal potential is properly channeled, we may expect the area of freedom of the United States to increase. The problem is to spend up our rate of social invention in the service of the welfare of all the people.”
Fox wouldn’t like this guy.
The Zen master says, “We’ll see.”
One day, the boy is riding and gets thrown off the horse and hurts his leg. He’s no longer able to walk, so all of the villagers say, “How terrible!”
The Zen master says, “We’ll see.”
Some time passes and the village goes to war. All of the other young men get sent off to fight, but this boy can’t fight because his leg is messed up. All of the villagers say, “How wonderful!”
The Zen master says, “We’ll see.”
Trump is a Fox News soundbite. It’s all he knows about politics. We’re seeing Fox News, the retailer of talk radio and alt-right populist bulls—t, seizing control of government policy. God save us all.
