It’s not a particularly bold prediction to say that last week’s cuts to state university budgets won’t be the last reductions the state will have to make to balance the current year’s budget.

Even after economic experts lowered their revenue predictions in November, state tax receipts are falling below projections. The latest report showed that tax revenues for February fell $53.6 million below the adjusted estimates.

The announcement of that shortfall was followed immediately by an announcement from Gov. Sam Brownback that he would impose a 3 percent “allotment” cut that would require state universities to reduce their spending for the current fiscal year by $17 million. Brownback had proudly pointed to the fact that he had held higher education “harmless” in earlier cuts to the current year’s budget, but those days now are over.

What will be next?

It’s only been about two weeks since the Legislature passed budget plans for this year and next, but those budgets already are out of balance. The budget for the rest of this year carried a slim $6 million ending balance, which the February revenue report instantly turned into a $47 million deficit. Even with the $17 million cut to state universities, the state still is $30 million short — and that’s without four more months of likely revenue shortfalls before the end of the fiscal year and without any plan in place to address the Kansas Supreme Court’s ruling on school finance.

The state already is proposing a measure to divert traffic fine money from local governments to bolster state coffers. How far will lawmakers go to try to preserve the fiction that their economic plans are working?

It seems impossible to many Kansans that the governor and legislative leaders can’t recognize that the course they are on is damaging to the state and its residents. Even more unbelievable is that they can see that damage but are unwilling to do anything about it. Their refusal to consider any adjustment to large income tax cuts passed in 2012 lends credence to the suggestion of some observers that the current financial situation might be exactly what the governor and other leaders who favor smaller government planned all along. It’s hard to cut spending, they reason, but if you strangle state revenues to the point that there is no money to spend, it makes it easier to politically justify those cuts.

Brownback continues to claim that Kansas has “an economic problem, not a tax policy problem.” He blames the economic problems on external factors, but the economic and employment recovery in Kansas has been slower than in other states. The tax cuts that were supposed to be “a shot of adrenaline” to the Kansas economy haven’t helped the economy, but they may be working perfectly as a strategy to downsize Kansas government regardless of the impact that has on Kansas residents.

For the last several years, lawmakers have shielded the state from the worst impacts of the revenue shortfall by spending reserve funds, sweeping money from the state highway fund and other state programs and increasing the state’s debt. At the same time, the state has eliminated government agencies and services and reduced its support for some of the state’s most vulnerable residents.

Is this what success looks like for Brownback’s “experiment” with the Kansas economy? It sure doesn’t look like success in the eyes of many Kansans.