Kansas did a big, beautiful ‘experiment' a decade ago. What happened next is a warning, especially for the GOP.
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Brownback called it a '
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It was, in many ways, a dry run for what Republicans now hope to do at the federal level now, as outlined by the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. Both the Kansas experiment and this current Trump regime proposed massive tax cuts, deregulatory zeal, and aggressive curbs on the welfare state. But in Kansas, what happened next wasn't the economic boom that had been promised. Instead, it was a fiscal crisis, a political revolt, and, ultimately, a warning.
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In the early days of the Kansas plan, the optimism was real. Some small business owners said the pass-through exemption gave them more cash to hire. There was even a brief uptick in job growth in 2012 and early 2013, just enough for Brownback and his allies to declare the experiment a success in the making. But those gains quickly faded. The state's job growth soon fell behind neighboring states and the national average, and by 2014, even some Republicans were quietly acknowledging the numbers didn't add up.
They were right to worry. Tax revenues
Brownback's administration resorted to short-term fixes like highway fund raids and pension deferrals to plug growing budget holes. And while conservatives pointed to national economic headwinds, the contrast with more stable (as well as deeply conservative) neighboring states was hard to ignore.
The backlash came swiftly and from within the Republican Party itself. In 2016, a wave of moderate Republicans and Democrats ousted conservative incumbents in primaries, forming a bipartisan legislative bloc strong enough to override Brownback's vetoes. Much of the original tax-cut package was repealed by 2017. Later that year Brownback,
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What followed when he left was a political realignment few saw coming. Brownback's lieutenant governor narrowly lost the Republican primary in 2018. In the fall that year, Kansans elected Democrat Laura Kelly as governor and sent Democrat Sharice Davids to Congress, the first Democrat to represent the Kansas 3rd District in a decade and the first openly LGBTQ Native American in Congress. In 2022, in the wake of the Dobbs decision that rolled back abortion access, Kansans shocked the nation by
The lesson here isn't just about fiscal math. It's about political overreach, economic theory colliding with reality, and the limits of ideology when it hits everyday life, when a rural hospital shuts down, or your kid's school week gets cut to four days.
One big difference between the Trump administration's efforts and the one in Kansas, according to Emporia State University professor Michael Smith, who literally
'That didn't work,' said Smith. 'With Trump, it is much more this idea that, oh no, we want to slash government.'
Another difference: Kansas was forced to make changes. Unlike the federal government, Kansas must balance its budget by constitutional necessity. The federal government doesn't have to.
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There's a temptation, especially in Washington, to believe you can have it all: tax cuts, growth, and fiscal responsibility, without hard tradeoffs. That certainly is how the US government is headed to a $37 trillion national debt.
The story of the Kansas Experiment is not just a chapter in that state's history. It may be a preview of America's future.
James Pindell is a Globe political reporter who reports and analyzes American politics, especially in New England.
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