Standard & Poor's cuts Kansas credit rating, citing Brownback tax cuts

Rss@dailykos.com (hunter)
Friday, August 08, 2014, 8:54 pm
.
Gov. Sam Brownback has led Kansas into a conservative tax-cut "experiment" with results that could perhaps be compared to the conservative "experiment" in Iraq: chaos and failure to such a dramatic extent that it should rightfully disgrace all involved and discredit the underlying theories involved for approximately forever. You know, if we bothered to keep track of those things.
How bad is it? Bad enough that it's just taken another notch off the state's credit score.
.
Standard & Poor's Ratings cut the credit score for Kansas to AA from AA+ on Wednesday in another blow to the deep income tax cuts championed by Republican Governor Sam Brownback, who is struggling to keep his post in upcoming elections.
In a report explaining the downgrade, S&P said the Kansas budget is not structurally balanced and described a fiscal situation with very little breathing room. [...]
.
The agency also has a negative outlook for the state based on more tax cuts scheduled for future years, which it said could further damage the state's finances. It said the state expects receipts to fall by $682.3 million through the end of fiscal 2019 because of the cuts.
.
This deals another blow to Brownback's election-year insistence that all that economic growth and stability he promised is just around the corner, give or take another Friedman Unit. Don't hold your breath, though, because carting you off to the hospital afterwards might just break the Kansas budget completely.


<Source>