Dear Editor,
For over 25 years, TABOR haters have warned its passage would destroy the state. Your blind anger at losing has you now blaming TABOR for the growth in jobs, population, tourists, and prosperity. You object to government sharing the abundance you denied would happen with the private sector that earned it.
You begin by predicting we will become like Arkansas (home of your friends, the Clintons) and West Virginia (home of U.S. Senator, KKK member, and pork barrel king Robert Byrd). Silly.
You ignore TABOR votes for the TRANS debt to widen I-25, to pass the Broncos and Rockies taxes, the tobacco tax, Amendment 23, local taxes, and other revenue increases. You blame GOP legislators for honoring their oath to obey the state constitution. You write, “…by 2030, it’s all be over for a state that people are flocking to right now.” What? Not even one orphan left? One sparrow? One snowflake? The Sahara of the Rockies?
Your apocalyptic view of the End Times is a tad extreme. TABOR has worked for 23 years, despite illegal political manipulations to blunt its success. In 2005, Referendum C was sold as a “five-year time out” after which TABOR would return. Instead, Ref. C still steals a billion dollars a year in excess revenue from our required tax refunds. You defend that theft of new revenue you predicted would never come in, and you want it expanded. Most voters know a statute like Ref. C cannot amend the state constitution, even if sold that way, which it wasn’t.
If we are facing “inevitable disaster,” why are you still tinkering with TABOR? Prepare your will, sell your house (in a strong market), and move to California, where unlimited government spending has wrought a fiscal utopia. Ignore the flight of Californians to everywhere else.
You assure readers “This isn’t hyperbole, folks.” If it isn’t, what is?
As an aside, you condemn me, TABOR’s author, as a Colorado Springs lawyer (I never was), a Denver slumlord (without tenants, one can’t be a landlord, much less a slumlord), and “acting like a dweeb,” (“a boring, studious, or socially inept person”). Those are three great reasons to oppose a ballot issue to limit government revenue growth–two lies and one schoolyard taunt.
You call Colorado’s state ranking of 19th highest tax burden “mediocre.” Apparently, you won’t rest until we are Number One in high taxes.
What you call a “convoluted scheme” allows state government revenue to grow by adding inflation plus population, and more if voters approve. Adding 1% plus 2% is 3%. Gee, is that complex! TABOR covers only 60% of the state budget. Voter-approved taxes are also excluded from the spending limit, contrary to your false claim.
You wrote, “Government by fear is the worst form of government there is.” And just what, other than fear, are you mongering?
You never mention current state spending. At $27,000,000,000 yearly, it is about $20,000 per average family of four, on top of local and federal tax burdens. Your only reply is, “Not enough!”
Next time, list total state spending in 1993, when TABOR passed, and this year. Has it almost tripled?
Your state “hospital fee” is imposed on sick people in Colorado hospital beds; it does not “send money back to the state.” It comes from patients and raises all hospital bills and costs. Maybe if we tax sickness enough, it will go away! Can we do the same with burglars?
You write, “More people on Medicaid saves hospitals, consumers, and Colorado taxpayers money.” Financially literate readers see through that. So you think we save money by putting everyone on welfare; single payer (socialist) health care means prosperity; Obamacare works; and Amendment 69, the $25 BILLION yearly state tax increase on November’s ballot, is dandy.
You want to rewrite TABOR again and shrink revenue subject to its modest revenue growth limits. That only cheats taxpayers out of hundreds of millions in yearly tax refunds of excess revenue growth that are just starting to re-appear, despite Ref. C’s perpetual heist.
You say you are “not asking for tax hikes here.” Ahem. Stealing our tax refunds is a tax hike. You say you want government to keep “everyone’s existing fair share.” Isn’t “fair share” the legal amount? Isn’t TABOR the law, which should be obeyed, not rewritten to redefine what is government’s fair share? Doesn’t TABOR place that fairness decision in the hands of voters, not politicians?
Douglas Bruce is a former state lawmaker from Colorado Springs and the author of Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights.