KANSAS, SOUTH CAROLINA, TENNESSEE: GOP-CONTROLLED TAX INCREASES

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> New York Times
https://archive.is/FmPfz

Conservative lawmakers in Kansas, South Carolina and Tennessee have agreed to significant tax increases in recent weeks to meet demands for more revenue.

In South Carolina, Republicans overrode their governor’s veto and a blocked a filibuster to increase the gas tax. They also rejected a series of broader tax cuts on the grounds that they were too expensive

The Republican governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, signed into law the first increase in the state’s gas tax in almost three decades.

And in the most striking rebuke of conservative tax policy in recent memory, Republicans in Kansas have undone much of the tax overhaul that Gov. Sam Brownback held up as a model for other states and the federal government to emulate.

Mr. Trump and Republicans in Washington are undeterred. Kansas, they argue, is not an economic microcosm for the country, with its unique dependence on energy, agriculture and aircraft manufacturing. And lawmakers there never could reduce spending enough to correspond to the much lower level of tax revenue coming into the state treasury.