TOPEKA, Kan. _ Would Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, once House Speaker Paul Ryan's boss and still fond of him today, relish the chance to remake Washington the way he's overhauled Kansas with supply-side sensibilities?
He smiles. Pauses.
"It's what I thought would happen all along," the governor says. "You change America by changing states. That's how it's done. ... We've pioneered these areas."
Brownback certainly changed Kansas _ with tax cuts that carved a $340 million hole in the state budget through this summer, $900 million through the next year, without yet turbocharging its economy as he promised.
The governor's reputation as the GOP's tax-cutting superstar has dimmed. Almost no Republican will point to Kansas as a model, as many did a few years ago. But Brownback remains a true believer.
Now he sees the Great Kansas Experiment in conservatism headed to Washington at the heart of the Ryan agenda.
Congressional Republicans recently huddled in Philadelphia to sketch out their priorities for the months ahead. Their plans draw inspiration from the same economic and social theories that drove Brownback's bold rewriting of his state's tax code, welfare rules and Medicaid a few years ago in Topeka.
Brownback and Ryan both approach government as evangelists of lower taxes, smaller government. Their convictions echo the thinking of the late congressman and Housing Secretary Jack Kemp, the morals-driven social policy outlook of Ronald Reagan Cabinet member Bill Bennett and the trickle-down economics of conservatives Art Laffer and Stephen Moore. Those two economists, who helped craft the Brownback approach in Kansas, also have the ear of one Donald Trump.
Ryan stands ready to apply that free market philosophy to a federal government that he and Brownback see as a bloated beast standing in the path of a robust economy.
"He's a kid in a candy store right now," Brownback says of his former aide. "Finally, we've got a chance to do something (in Washington). And he's a true policy wonk. He knows the policy, and he drives it."
