When Colorado voters’ decided to enforce a timeout in the harsh provisions of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, it sent the country’s anti-tax leaders into paroxysms of rage. Threatening to fix Gov. Bill Owens’ wagon, they’re wailing that voters had killed the law they had hoped to export to every unsuspecting nook and cranny of America.
In truth, any dire consequences to TABOR rests squarely on the shoulders of anti-tax zealots like Dick Armey and Grover Norquist. Working with their local minions, they needlessly converted a simple fix of TABOR’s “ratchet clause” into a battle royal, practically daring voters to stand up for good government.
There was no need for the zealots to get so hysterical – the ratchet is just the worst feature of TABOR, not the only one. TABOR still retains the one feature that makes any sense – a requirement that voters must approve all tax increases.
Norquist, who earlier failed in an attempt to purge moderate Virginia legislators, was in full bluster this week at this latest demonstration of his lack of political clout. He insisted that Owens’ role in winning Referendum C would ruin his standing with conservative groups. “Every other Republican governor is going to look at that and say, ‘That is a really bad career move.’ I don’t think there are any other Gov. Owenses out there,” Norquist snipped.
We half expected Norquist to blow his stack, but what to make of Colorado House minority leader Joe Stengel, the Littleton Republican? Fulminating in a conference call with other anti-tax activists Wednesday, he said C’s passage “will eliminate TABOR.” Norquist chimed in with his own obituary, claiming “TABOR’s as good as dead.”
Norquist’s fellow travelers on the Wall Street Journal editorial page took a more measured view Thursday. Now that the voters’ verdict is in, the Journal tacitly acknowledged that Colorado voters were not the agents of fiscal irresponsibility. “The main selling point of Owens and other Referendum C supporters was that TABOR needed to be fixed, not eliminated.”
That is indeed the case. As Owens spokesman Dan Hopkins argued Wednesday, “If Referendum C had not passed, people would have seen the horrendous budget cuts that would have been necessary.”
Historians have long contended that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, by reining in the excesses of capitalism that triggered the Great Depression, might have saved the free enterprise system in America. Likewise, by using the escape mechanism provided by TABOR itself to rid Colorado of its worst feature, voters improved the controversial amendment.
