Fascinatingly, Brownback’s goal seems identical to his opponents– to increase funding to schools through practical, responsible means. Despite the fact that the Governor has been continuously, indisputably cutting school funding, he says that he is supportive of “provid[ing] more money to the classroom” to “immediately benefit Kansas students.” This statement is factually accurate because education funding increases with inflation and in relation to the increasing number of students in public schools, despite the fact that funding per student adjusted for inflation is dropping under his governance. There is much to be said on this: Brownback’s work in 2015 has received international attention for its implications on the destabilization of state government as he and Kansas’s Republican senate work against the rulings of their State Supreme Court.
There are also a myriad of other effects to his political philosophy of lowering taxes, including Kansas’s current budget crisis. These are related to the cuts in education: decreasing funding to public education requires the state to spend more on other programs, such as welfare. Conversely, increased funding benefits individuals and communities economically, leading to greater taxable incomes. This is generally accepted to be the case in the funding of public education programs, from preschool to postsecondary (Clothier; “Is College Worth It?” 6). By decreasing education funding, the Kansas legislators are requiring reparative investments into other social programs to be made, to the detriment of their tax-cutting scheme, the state economy, and the quality of life of its citizens.
