What would Reagan do?
It’s a question business leaders and politicians in both parties in Colorado will consider at least once in the coming days, when they see it stamped on a red rubber bracelet sent to them by Jon Caldara, president of the conservative Independence Institute think tank in Golden.
In a letter accompanying the bracelets, Caldara says he wants the state’s leaders to consider President Reagan’s legacy when it comes to fiscal policy in the state. He never mentions Referendums C and D, the Nov. 1 ballot questions that propose suspending state revenue limits under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights for five years. But the ballot questions hover between every line of Caldara’s letter. He is a leader of the Vote No campaign.
“We hope that you will accept this bracelet, a gift from the Independence Institute,” the letter says. “May you wear it to help you always reaffirm your commitment to the ideals of limited government.”
Caldara said he ordered about 1,000 of the bracelets. One of them went to Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican whom Caldara and some other conservatives accuse of treason for helping craft the referendums with Democrats. The Vote No campaign’s boilerplate rhetoric says the proposals offer a “forever tax increase.”
But problematically for Caldara, Owens is doing what Reagan did, retired University of Colorado political scientist Conrad McBride said Thursday.
Like Reagan, Owens has spent most of his time in office paring government down, only to find himself faced with a revenue shortfall, McBride said. First, Reagan lowered taxes. Then he raised them, McBride said.
“The governor has behaved very much like both Reagan and (the elder) George Bush under pressure of an economic situation that cried out for some solution,” he said. “The Democratic Congress, and on this occasion, the state legislature, has forced his hand to in some way accept the expenditures of government.”
Owens and others in the Vote Yes campaign deny that letting the state keep $3.7 million in tax revenues that would otherwise be refunded under TABOR constitutes a tax increase. So Owens spokesman Dan Hopkins disagreed with McBride’s analysis Thursday. But the governor, unlike Caldara, does fit the Reagan mold in terms of statesmanship, Hopkins said.
“Ronald Reagan approached debate forthrightly and honestly, and that’s something that Jon Caldara has not done in this debate,” Hopkins said. “He can’t win on the facts, so he uses subterfuge and gimmicks to try to draw attention away from the real issues.”
Owens has cut $1 billion from the state budget while in office, he said.
That pales in comparison with the cuts Reagan made, which far outweighed the federal tax increase that made it through the Reagan White House without a veto, Caldara said.
But if Owens can prove he meets the Reagan standard, Caldara will print up “What Would Owens Do?” bracelets, he said.
“I’m sure there are Democrats all over Colorado that would wear them,” he said.
Staff writer Jim Hughes can be reached at 303-820-1244 or jhughes@denverpost.com.
