Don't eliminate income tax

At the moment the three leading Republican Candidates for Missouri governor are Jay Ashcroft, Bill Engel and Mike Kehoe. All three indicate that they would be willing to repeal Missouri's income tax. This would reduce the state's revenue by about $10 billion annually. None of the candidates have indicated how they would replace this lost revenue or exactly what expenses they would cut.

Before such a tax cut is enacted, it may be wise to review the experience the State of Kansas had when it made substantial cuts to its income tax without enacting any other taxes to replace the lost revenue. The cuts amounted to $234 million in the first year and were projected to increase to $934 million per year after six years.

By 2017, Kansas had a $900 million budget gap. Other consequences were:

• Supporters of the Kansas tax cut said it would help the state's economy. Instead its economy did not grow faster than neighboring states or even Kansas' own growth in previous years.
• When Kansas cut taxes, its bond rating went down, and it had to cut central services such as education and infrastructure. After seeing this, a majority of Kansans decided they would prefer not to keep these tax cuts.
• The experiment with tax policy was such a failure that a Republican-controlled legislature not only voted to raise taxes, but did so over the veto of the governor.

I suggest we don't follow Kansas' example.

JOHN PIEPHO, Cape Girardeau