For some of us, one election issue is a concern some legislators want to defund police. 

In fact, this is only a handful of extremists in the Democratic Party and some of those only want to defund the acquisition of military equipment by the police. Voters in St. Louis have already punished one such extremist, Rep. Cori Bush, by voting her out in their recent primary.

I believe a much larger and more significant issue is the defunding of government, hidden under the guise of “smaller government.”

A little over 10 years ago there was something called the Kansas Experiment. Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, with the support of a Republican supermajority in the legislature, passed an aggressive tax-cutting bill. The idea was to prove Ronald Reagan’s supply-side, trickle-down economic theory where taxes given back result in economic growth. 

Kansas was expecting a shot of adrenaline into its economy, and that such growth would maintain needed government revenues despite a lower tax rate.

Kansas’ economic growth was far below expectations, lagging behind neighboring Midwestern states.

Dramatically reduced state tax revenues resulted in spending cuts on roads, bridges and education. Medicaid benefits were cut. Pension payments were delayed. Kansas went through nine rounds of budget cuts in four years and its debt received three credit downgrades. 

The experiment almost fiscally killed the state.

In 2017, the Kansas legislature repealed the tax cut act. Gov. Brownback resigned and Kansans elected a Democrat in the next governor’s election.

Missouri perpetually does the same thing. A Republican super-majority continually looks to cut taxes.

Meanwhile the state chronically underfunds education. With one of the lowest teacher wages in the country, rural public schools can’t staff positions. Medicaid eligibility is restrictive and an antique IT system lacking needed modernization investment can’t administer programs that are federally funded.

There are rural healthcare deserts. The state is one of the worst in senior, mental health and childcare services.

Across the board, state jobs are chronically understaffed due to uncompetitive wages. Yet the state continues to look to cut taxes.

In 2017, Republicans and President Donald Trump passed a tax cut act which dramatically reduced corporation taxes.

The expected economic boom didn’t happen. Workforce wages were not sustainably increased. Rather than reinvest in the U.S., corporations used the windfall to buy back their stock.

Meanwhile, the tax cut added almost $8 trillion to the federal deficit. With an escalating national debt, Republicans started calling once again for cuts to “entitlement” programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

And therein lays the sneaky way Republicans defund government. No one has the political courage to eliminate Social Security. Instead, you reduce the government’s revenue and use that as the reason to reduce benefits.

Unspoken is the responsibility to adequately fund a promised safety net. Simply uncapping the wages that can be taxed for Social Security (currently a $168,600 cap) would go a long way to funding the program without contributing to our debt.

Every time Republicans control the House majority, they struggle to fund the government, which is the primary responsibility of Congress as specified in the U.S. Constitution. 

They threaten government shutdowns and make little effort to find workable compromises. They aren’t making government smaller; they’re killing it by starving it of funds.

Currently, Republicans want to repeal a bill that provides funding to beef up the staff of the IRS. Rather than having the guts to shrink the government by reducing services people need, instead they are crippling the government’s ability to collect the taxes that pay for those services.

Part of the immigration problem is that we lack the staffing to process asylum applications, which are legal.

Rather than authorizing funds to increase that staffing, it is easier to use the issue for political gain. Defund and blame the other guy.

Like most citizens, I am in favor of smaller, more efficient government. That is different than crippling government by defunding it or adding to the federal deficit by reducing revenues for programs you are legally obligated to provide.

Republicans and Democrats offer a stark contrast today in how they govern. 

Both parties like to spend money. Only one party is honest about the need for tax revenues to pay for government services and programs.

Why would you vote for anyone to govern when they are abdicating that responsibility in favor of defunding that which they are supposed to govern?