Cut taxes and they will come.

Quote:Liberals threw every punch they had at Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback last fall, hoping to unseat the Republican for the sin of cutting tax rates to stimulate job growth and economic revival. Guess who’s still standing.

From the New York Times to the Kansas City Star, Brownback’s agenda was denounced as a failure and a warning to others of what happens when you try to ride the Laffer Curve and cut taxes.

Here’s what you won’t read today: The tax cut is working. Labor Department data show job growth in Kansas tied with Utah as the fastest in the nation in February.

Back in 2012, Brownback cut the highest income-tax rate from 6.4% to 4.8% with the goal of eventually eliminating the state income tax entirely. The tax on small business income was zeroed out. It was denounced as “trickle-down economics,” though the state’s unemployment rate is now down to 4.5%.

“The number one complaint I’m hearing now,” Brownback tells us.[…]

Wages are also growing in Kansas. Before the tax cut, workers on KC’s Kansas side earned 40 cents an hour more than Missouri workers. Now the gap is $3.

The idea behind the Kansas tax cut was to provide long-term growth incentives for a state that has traditionally lagged the rest of the nation. The left seized on budget deficits in recent years as evidence that the plan wasn’t working. But that was due to an unwillingness of legislators to cut spending to match the tax cuts.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials...s-work.htm

TOPEKA, Kansas (AP) — New federal figures show that Kansas ranked 28th in February among states and the District of Columbia in its percentage of private-sector job growth over the previous year.

Seasonally adjusted data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that Kansas had 21,000 more residents employed in private-sector, nonfarm jobs in February than in February 2014. That’s an increase of nearly 1.9 percent, to 1.15 million.

Utah had the nation’s best growth rate of more than 4.8 percent.

Three neighboring states outperformed Kansas. Colorado experienced growth of 3.7 percent; Texas had 3.6 percent, and Arkansas saw 3 percent.

But Kansas did better than Missouri and Oklahoma, which both saw growth of about 1.7 percent.

Kansas also outperformed Iowa’s 1.4 percent and Nebraska’s 1.1 percent.

http://ksn.com/2015/03/27/federal-figure...-february/

Gov. Sam Brownback will include proposals to increase tax revenue to help fill a projected budget hole when he unveils his budget plan later this week, his chief of staff says.

He also will tackle education spending, which accounts for more than half of the state’s budget, as part of his proposed fix, said chief of staff Jon Hummel.

When Brownback starts his second term — and the 2015 legislative session — on Monday, he will have to balance his signature tax-cut policy with a deficit projected at $648 million in the next fiscal year. His handling of this challenge, which his critics say is self-imposed, could define his legacy as governor.

http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-gove...04450.html