Your Opinion: GOP to repeat failed trickle-down economics

Dear Editor:

Last week in Kansas the Republican legislature overturned a veto by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. Brownback had vetoed a large income tax increase and the legislature overturned the veto.

Taxes are going up in Kansas. Why? Because the great tax cut experiment has failed. Brownback took office in 2011 and led Republicans to huge tax cuts, all on the promise that cutting taxes would stimulate growth. It didn't happen. Taxes were cut all right, but economic growth fell to 0.2 percent compared to 2.0 percent for the rest of the country.

Now Republican legislators in Kansas have had enough of so-called trickle-down economics, the false notion that if you feed the rich with tax cuts the bounty will trickle down to the working class.

The Bush Republicans tried the same thing on the federal level in 2001-03. They passed huge tax cuts, and these, combined with deregulation and an unnecessary war in Iraq led to massive deficits and the Great Recession. In that recession (2007-09) unemployment rose from 4.7 percent to 10 percent, gross domestic product shrank and jobs were lost at a rate of 800,000 per month.

Now the Trump Republicans want to repeat the experiment. Trump wants the biggest tax cuts ever - yuge tax cuts. And once again the promise is that tax cuts will stimulate the economy. One is reminded of Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

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