Sam Brownback, the manager of the economic black hole formerly known as Kansas, has formally endorsed sometimes-senator Marco Rubio.
I don't understand the motives or intentions behind every endorsement, but this one makes perfect sense.
"Marco Rubio is a true conservative who can unite the party and defeat Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in the fall," Brownback, a former senator and congressman, said in a statement. "In the past, conservatives have been forced to make a choice between their head and their hearts. This year, we are fortunate to not have to make that choice.”
Brownback said Rubio has a “proven track record of protecting life, defending religious liberty, and undoing Obamacare.”
It's not clear how one can have a "proven track record" of "undoing Obamacare" if Obamacare is still with us, but I digress.
It would be easy for it to get lost in the shuffle of this chaotic and overtly-racist campaign season, but Rubio has the distinction of calling for the most fiscally irresponsible economic policy of the entire field.
Rubio's disastrous plan would, among other things, eliminate taxes on capital gains and transfer enormous amounts of wealth to people who are already extremely wealthy.
According to the Tax Policy Center, Mr. Rubio’s current plan would cost $6.8 trillion over the 10-year budget window. That is, 16 percent of currently projected federal tax revenues over that period, and nearly three times the size of Mr. Lee’s plan from less than three years ago. [...]
Mr. Rubio’s biggest tax cuts, by far, are at the top. His new plan would raise incomes for the top one-thousandth of taxpayers by 8.9 percent — that is, an average tax cut of more than $900,000 per year — because of its sharp cuts in tax rates on business income and capital income.
Of course, all that assumes Mr. Rubio could find a way to finance a 16 percent overall cut in federal taxes. Mr. Rubio is counting on strong economic growth, induced by his capital tax cuts, to pay for his plan to cut taxes sharply on nearly everyone. But recent experience with tax cuts on capital income — no apparent economic boost came from the Bush tax cuts of 2003 — does not suggest that will be possible.
Rubio is also proposing that we boost defense spending and balance the budget all while shredding federal revenue.
This should all sound very familiar and not just because it's typical Republican economic orthodoxy.
Governor Sam Brownback has employed this philosophy in Kansas to catastrophic results. School systems have teetered on bankruptcy and spending on virtually every social program has been cut by significant amounts while the wealthy have seen their obligations zeroed out or significantly reduced.
Brownback has endorsed a man who has pledged to bring financial insolvency to all 50 states.