TOPEKA, Kan. _ Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback walked into a packed room of reporters Thursday afternoon and said it was "the day you've all been waiting for."
The White House announced Wednesday night that President Donald Trump had picked Brownback to become the next ambassador at-large for international religious freedom.
It is unclear when he will resign as governor, however. Brownback declined to give a timetable when asked Thursday. Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, a plastic surgeon from Johnson County, would become governor once Brownback leaves.
Brownback's roller-coaster tenure as governor saw Kansas gain national attention for his conservative vision of state government. His landmark 2012 tax cuts, which slashed income tax rates and created an income tax exemption for the owners of limited liability companies and other pass-through businesses, came to define Brownback's more than six years as governor.
During a half-hour news conference Thursday the Kansas Republican conceded there could have been some changes made to his 2012 tax cut policy, but he also championed his record on anti-abortion legislation and other conservative Republican ideals.
But like many of his opponents, Brownback's reflection on his legacy and time in office focused on the tax cuts that defined his tenure.
"Income taxes are lower now than when I took office," Brownback said. "I wish they were lower still."
He said if there was one thing he could change it would have been "the price of oil and the price of wheat," and continued to point to a recession that he said caused economic struggles in Kansas.
But he also said lawmakers' work in the area of business tax cuts should have been done "more artfully," and "probably needed" a cap.
Brownback said people can change America by changing states. Kansas opened a new policy frontier for small-business taxes with his 2012 tax cuts, he said.
"I don't think that's going away in the country," he said. "The growth of small business is so critical and it's so going the wrong way."
He's continued to defend the tax cuts even as they were largely repealed.
"It's amazed me too that a tax cut done in a Midwestern state in 2012 has been the dominant tax discussion in America the last five years," Brownback said. "That's been amazing to me.
" ... But I think if you look at the centerpieces of it, people will be dissecting it, people are writing books now on it to determine 'OK, is this the right way to go?' And I do think that centerpiece issue that you see there on small business tax, favorable small business, will be something that will continue to pop up around the country and I hope it comes back in Kansas."
Brownback said he hoped people will look around at certain programs and changes and remember him. He pointed to accomplishments like a fourth-grade reading program and a University of Kansas Medical Center building that just opened and said he wanted people to be able to say, "that was something that happened during the Brownback administration."
"I hope what they'll end up doing is looking around and (say), 'you know, Sam Brownback helped on that.'"
