Kansas Senate Bill Substitute HB 2117 published by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), supported by "The Wall Street Journal", supply-side economist Arthur Laffer, and anti-tax leader Grover Norquist. By 2017, state revenues had fallen by hundreds of millions of dollars causing spending on roads, bridges, and education to be slashed, but instead of boosting economic growth, growth in Kansas remained consistently below average. That year, the Republican Legislature of Kansas voted to roll back the cuts and after Brownback vetoed the repeal overrode his veto. As a conservative Republican Senator from Kansas, Brownback had been reelected by large margins in 1998 and 2004, and
Laffer curve Jude Wanniski, who was also present at the meeting. The basic concept was not new; Laffer himself notes antecedents in the writings of the 14th-century social philosopher Ibn Khaldun and others. Laffer does not claim to have invented the concept; he notes that there are antecedents, including in the "Muqaddimah" by 14th-century Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun, and in the writings of John Maynard Keynes. It was not until the 1970s that Laffer's name began to be associated with the idea. The term "Laffer curve" was reportedly coined by Jude Wanniski (a writer for "The Wall Street Journal") after a 1974