Kansas does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending discipline problem, and the state has learned this lesson the hard way before.
Governor Laura Kelly’s proposed $10.8 billion state general fund budget for fiscal year 2027 spends roughly $640 million more than projected revenues. That follows last year’s budget, which administration officials acknowledged spent about $700 million more than the state collected, continuing a pattern of structural imbalance rather than restraint.
Supporters of the budget argue that spending growth is modest at about 1.6% year over year. That argument misses the point. The real problem is not the growth rate today. It is that spending was never brought back down after the pandemic-era surge. Emergency lockdown spending permanently inflated the budget baseline, and lawmakers accepted that excess as the new normal.
Basic Econ 101 teaches that governments do not create resources. They redistribute them. And unlike Washington, states cannot print money. When Kansas spends more than it collects, the bill comes due in only two ways: higher taxes now or higher taxes later. There is no third option.
Kansas has been here before.
A decade ago, the state attempted meaningful tax reform under Governor Sam Brownback without first correcting unsustainable spending; some may blame runaway courts and school finance litigation but the takeaway is the same. When revenues tightened, lawmakers chose to protect the government rather than reform it. Taxes were blamed. Rate cut were reversed. The wrong lesson was learned.
The failure of that era was not tax relief. It was the absence of spending discipline, with part of it forced by court-ordered education spending increases. Regardless, tax relief without spending reform always fails, because government growth eventually overwhelms revenue. That history is exactly why Kansans should be skeptical when leaders expand budgets today while promising stability tomorrow.
The data reinforce this concern. According to the Kansas Policy Institute’s 2025 Green Book, Kansas spends $5,428 per resident, ranking 23rd nationally, and collects $6,326 per person in state and local taxes, ranking 24th.
Kansas is not a low-tax, limited-government state. It is a middle-of-the-pack spender with below-average population growth and weak competitiveness.
Defenders of higher spending often point to strong revenues as justification. But recent revenue growth has been uneven. Individual income tax collections have surged while retail sales and corporate income taxes have softened. That is not broad-based growth. It is a warning sign.
This is why responsible budgeting matters more than ever. The Kansas Policy Institute’s Responsible Kansas Budget framework provides a clear path forward. It limits spending growth to population growth plus inflation, reflecting what taxpayers can sustainably afford. But given past excesses, even that rule must be applied carefully.
Kansas should first reduce spending back to fiscal year 2019 or 2020 levels, before lockdowns and federal relief distorted incentives. Only then does a growth cap actually restrain government rather than legitimize past overspending.
This is not about austerity. It is about restoring balance.
Kansas is already facing rising cost pressures from federal policy changes. Provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill shift more administrative costs for programs like SNAP to the states, adding roughly $21 million to Kansas’s budget. Kansas also faces potential penalties of $20 to $40 million due to elevated SNAP error rates, as detailed in legislative hearings reported by the Kansas Reflector. These costs are permanent. They compound over time.
Lawmakers passed a tax trigger intended to gradually reduce income tax rates when revenues exceed inflation-adjusted thresholds. Yet even when revenues beat projections, taxpayers see no relief because spending absorbs the surplus first. This is not accidental. It is the inevitable outcome of a budget process that treats every surplus as permission to grow the government.
Kansas cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the last decade.
The path forward is straightforward. Cut spending first to correct the inflated baseline. Limit future growth to what taxpayers can afford. Then use surpluses for real tax relief, moving toward a consumption-based tax system that rewards work and investment rather than punishing them.
Kansas learned this lesson once. It does not need to learn it again.
