We once heard former Montana Governor (and one of our favorite pro-gun Democrats) Brian Schweitzer say that Republicans today aren't very good when it comes to fiscal responsibility and, boy, are they proving him right. In state after state, the election of extreme conservatives, the faction that rules today's GOP, has led to one financial mess after another. And what is the Republican solution to the messes they get themselves into? The usual GOP playbook: cut funding for education, healthcare, pensions, salaries, infrastructure spending, etc. All of which hurts whom? You and I, of course, the average Citizen.

Here's a brief rundown of what the GOP has been up to in a few of those states:

(Kansas statehouse)

Kansas

"Kansas Tax Cuts Not Bringing in Expected Revenue"

Oklahoma - With oil selling for $100 a barrel not too long ago, Oklahoma's Republican Governor Mary Fallin and her far right state legislature decided to reduce the state's income tax rates, with most of those tax breaks going to upper income residents. Once the price of oil began to fall, however, and layoffs within the oil industry started to slow Oklahoma's economy, the state began facing estimated $600 million to $1 billion dollar annual shortfalls.

(image from post-gazette.com)

So who do you think will pay for Oklahoma's revenue shortfall? As is usual under Republican leadership, it's been the average Citizen. Education spending was slashed (resulting in many schools having just a four-day week) , fees were raised at state parks, and there was an initiative to raise the state's sales tax another one percent. It's too bad Governor Fallin and the legislature didn't heed the warnings of Republican Treasurer and economist Ken Miller, who supports tax cuts only if they are revenue neutral and calls the GOP's fiscal crisis "self-inflicted".

Pennsylvania - Voters in Pennsylvania ousted sitting Republican Governor Tom Corbett in 2014 after he left the Commonwealth with a projected $2+ billion deficit in the coming year. How did things get so bad in the Keystone State? Governor Corbett and his GOP legislature cut corporate taxes by $2.1 billion, which resulted in lower tax receipts and lower economic growth, the direct opposite of what the Governor promised. Take a look at the article in our Politics section, "Pennsylvania GOP Leaves State in Financial Mess" for more details on this situation.

Louisiana - When Bobby Jindal, the Boy Wonder of the far right, was elected Governor in 2007, the state had a billion dollar surplus and was flush with a cash infusion from the federal government following Hurricane Katrina. Deciding to emulate his hero, Ronald Reagan, but without Reagan's pragmatism and without a Democratic legislature to keep him in check, Governor Jindal promptly signed the largest tax cut in the state's history. The result? A sluggish economy, a public university system in shambles, a negative credit rating from Moody's, and a $1.2 billion dollar deficit.

(Bobby Jindal image from politico.com)

Worse yet, and even though the Republicans in the state legislature tried to craft a tax package to resolve these issues, the Governor said he would veto any tax increase that wasn't approved by Grover Norquist's anti-tax special interest group. Just who was running Louisiana under Jindal? The people of Louisiana or some Washington-based organization that fronts for a few rich and powerful conservatives? No surprise that a majority of state residents came to disapprove of Governor Jindal's performance and elected pro-gun Democrat John Bel Edwards to succeed him.

Kentucky - If you think that multi-millionaire Republican Matt Bevin is a friend to working folks and the middle class (as the GOP keeps trying to argue), you may have missed the following actions taken by Mr. Bevin since he was elected Governor in 2015:

While voters in the rest of the nation have consistently been raising the minimum wage in recent years, Governor Bevin decided to do the opposite. He reduced Kentucky's minimum wage for state workers and contractors from $10.10 to $7.25. In fact, Mr. Bevin is on record as wanting to completely eliminate the minimum wage.
Not surprisingly, Kentucky now is ranked 47th in the country in per-capita personal income and only five states in recent years have seen slower growth in personal income than Kentucky.
Although Kentuckians, like most Americans, believe it should be illegal for health insurance companies to discriminate against someone with a pre-existing medical condition, Mr. Bevin's feels otherwise and repeatedly supported legislation that would allow such discrimination.
Governor Bevin cut dental and vision coverage without warning for 500,000 Kentuckians
He proposed changes to Medicaid that would have caused an estimated 100,000 Kentuckians to lose their coverage.
He also supported changes at the national level to the Affordable Care Act that would cause an estimated 386,000 Kentuckians to lose their healthcare coverage.
On public pensions, Mr. Bevin signed reform legislation that even some Republican legislators voted against. Among its provisions is one that allows those same legislators to change pension retirement contracts at any time. Apparently a contract is a contract only when the far right agrees with it.

These actions, not to mention the childish public temper tantrums Mr. Bevin frequently throws, have led us to encourage Kentuckians to vote for Democrat Andy Beshear in 2019.

Wisconsin - Governor Scott Walker, who is a darling of the extreme conservatives and who seemingly danced to the tune of the billionaire Koch brothers, followed the standard conservative playbook during his years in office: cut taxes for the well off, slash government spending, attack workers, and then he decided to run for President in 2016. He got no traction nationally and, during the Republican primaries, even Donald Trump ridiculed Mr. Walker's economic non-results in Wisconsin.

(Scott Walker image from businessinsider.com)

Michigan - Under the stewardship of self-proclaimed "accounting nerd" Rick Snyder, Michigan's GOP cut taxes for business and then the Governor decided he could pay for them by cutting a billion dollars from education and raising taxes on the working poor and retirees. Oh, and he also flip-flopped and signed right-to-work legislation that the lame duck legislature snuck through without public debate. All of this was supposed to increase economic growth but, once again, these standard Republican "solutions" didn't work: Michigan's economy continued to lag the rest of the country.

And adding insult to injury, Governor Snyder apparently ignored the business tax credits still on the books from the years of the Great Recession, so Michigan had to address an even larger budget deficit. This left the Governor struggling to come up with a way to pay for repairs to the state's crumbling roads, universally recognized as the worst in the nation.

Notice the pattern here? Today's conservative GOP and their blind belief in a trickle-down economic policy of massive tax cuts for the well off and their declarations of war against the middle class and working classes are confirming that the proven Democratic philosophy of demand-side economics is the appropriate way to grow the economy. The Republicans' policies may be successful at making the rich richer, but only at the expense of the rest of us. The opposite is true when the Democratic Party runs the economic show: everyone, including the rich, ends up better off. That's why we'll keep casting our votes for the Dems.

Update: - Since first publishing the article above, there are signs that Americans are recognizing the fallacies in the far right's argument that slashing taxes on businesses and the well-off will stimulate economic growth:

In Kansas, more pragmatic Republicans defeated far right incumbents in GOP primaries and then worked with Democrats to reverse most of Governor Brownback's misguided tax cuts.

In Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, voters elected Democratic governors, who already have begun making progress to put their states back on a sound economic footing without doing it at the expense of the states' schools or working/middle class voters.

In Oklahoma, Democrats picked up four legislative seats in special elections during 2017 and even Republican Governor Mary Fallin switched positions and signaled support for tax increases.

Unfortunately, at the federal level, Congressional Republicans and Donald Trump passed their Kansas-style tax-cutting proposals for the already-wealthy and powerful. Their legislation not only hurts many workers and middle class Citizens, it has increased our national debt while doing little to stimulate the economy.

During the good economic times that we now enjoy (and which Mr. Trump inherited from the Obama-Biden years), national leaders should be focused on paying down our federal debt by running budget surpluses, as President Clinton did in the 1990's. Instead, the far right's ideological agenda is further proof that the national GOP still doesn't get it when it comes to economics.

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