❝ Earlier this year, Kansas’ GOP-controlled legislature voted to effectively end a five-year push to slash taxes on individuals and businesses after revenues plummeted and forced deep cuts and tax hikes elsewhere. In doing so, they overturned a veto by Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican who drew national attention in conservative circles when he launched his ambitious tax-cut program in 2012.

❝ For Democrats, Kansas has become Exhibit A in their prosecution of the Trump tax cuts. It’s routinely cited as evidence the new GOP proposal won’t grow the economy or pay for itself, and that proposed business tax reduction similar to Brownback’s will create a new loophole for wealthy individuals to exploit.

“It was a real-life experiment in a Republican state, similar to what President Trump announced,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor. “It added so much money to their deficit over four years that they have had to figure out ways to raise taxes now, just as Ronald Reagan did in 1986.”

The chart is revealing:

The results were not as promised:

❝ “Over the next five years, state and local governments battled over a dwindling revenue supply, including a roughly $700 million drop-off in the first year. Job growth, meanwhile, lagged behind the national average and neighboring states.

Republicans will go to their metaphorical grave swearing that dribble-down economics will save America’s workers, middle-class, you name it. Failure after failure for decades doesn’t sink into heads billiard ball-clean of experience or recorded economic history.

Thanks, Barry Ritholtz