Watch Seth Meyers explain what happened in Kansas when taxes were cut dramatically
It's not every day that small business owners ask for their taxes to be raised, but that's what's happening in Kansas.
As Seth Meyers explains, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) cut taxes for the wealthy and eliminated income taxes for small businesses, saying it would be a "real live experiment" for conservative economic policies. "That's a terrible sales pitch for something," Meyers quipped. "Those words only usually show up in shady classified ads." Supporters said the cuts would somehow generate $323 million in new revenue, but they actually produced a $688 million loss, and the state got creative when it tried to close the gap, at one point taking adult items seized from a business that owed back taxes and auctioning them off online.
Now, residents are complaining about budgets being slashed and business owners are rejecting the drastic tax cuts, leading Meyers to believe the results of the experiment are in. "Republicans want to replicate these policies on a national level, but even when you buy couch cleaner they tell you to try it on a small patch of fabric first," he said. "That's what happened here — Kansas was the small patch of fabric. Not only did the cleaner not work, the couch exploded." Watch the (in some parts racy) video below. Catherine Garcia
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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