In 2012, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback promised his state a “shot of adrenaline.” Cut taxes deeply on businesses and wealthy households, he said, and the economy would surge: new businesses, more jobs, rising prosperity.
Brownback wasn’t improvising. The idea had been a central Republican economic theory since the Reagan era. He brought in Arthur Laffer, Reagan’s economic advisor and the architect of supply-side economics, to design the plan. This was the theory’s best champion, with a willing state and a blank check. It still failed.
Kansas implemented trickle-down economics more completely than any state before or since. They cut income taxes across the board, flattened the income tax in favor of higher earners, and eliminated taxes on pass-through business income entirely. The pass-through rate, what small businesses, partnerships, and sole proprietorships pay, dropped from 7 percent to zero.
The people who were supposed to benefit were ordinary Kansans. The plumber who wanted to start his own shop. The woman who wanted to open a bakery. The state would get richer from all the new economic activity. That was the pitch.
That is not what happened.
Large law firms, oil exploration companies, and high-income individuals quickly used the zero rate to shield income. They didn’t put it back into the Kansas economy. There were no increases in new businesses and no increase in jobs compared to neighboring states that had left their tax rates alone. Kansas job growth was roughly half the national average.
Energy prices contributed to the slowdown but do not explain the results; other states that were affected by energy prices did better than Kansas.
Meanwhile the bill came due. Revenues dropped by nearly $700 million in a single year. School districts closed early, cut librarians and janitors, raised fees for kindergarten, and eliminated art and music programs. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled three times that education funding had fallen below constitutional requirements. The state borrowed $1.3 billion from its highway fund. Roads people relied on went unrepaired.
The state shorted its own employees’ retirement funds to cover the budget gap. Social service offices closed. In 2017, it came out that more than 70 children had gone missing from the state’s foster care system. Kansas was downgraded by credit agencies three times.
Within five years, the Republican-controlled legislature had seen enough. They voted to reverse the tax cuts. When Brownback vetoed the reversal, they overrode him.
In 2025, Congress passed the same playbook nationally. The Big Beautiful Bill made pass-through deductions permanent at the federal level. The same mechanism. The same promises. Research finds no concrete evidence it produces new investment or benefits for workers.
Kansas already ran this experiment. The results are in.
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Note: Some of the analyses below describe the Kansas tax cuts as an “experiment.” The policy was not intended as a test. Kansas officials worked with President Reagan’s economic advisor to design the plan that they believed would produce economic growth. Researchers later used the term “experiment” to describe the policy’s real-world outcomes.
- Brookings Institution: The Kansas Tax Cut Experiment
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Kansas Provides Compelling Evidence of Failure of Supply-Side Tax Cuts
- Center for American Progress: 7 Ways Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Hands $2 Trillion to the Rich
- The Guardian: Kansas Abandons Massive Tax Cuts That Provided Model for Trump’s Plan