Posted by
T.P. Beh on Friday, February 27, 2009 12:00:00 AM
In last Sunday’s Denver Post, State Senator Rollie Heath made an incredibly disingenuous argument for eliminating the 6% constitutional limit on yearly increases in state spending by a simple vote of the legislature (Don’t make budget cuts permanent, 2-22-09). While Heath admits that “TABOR requires voter approval for a ‘weakening’ of ‘limits on district revenue, spending, and debt,’” he goes on to declare that the offending Arveschoug-Bird amendment does not limit government spending but “merely allocates it.” Talk about audacity! This Boulder liberal must either be a fool, or take everyone in Colorado for one. The very reason Heath and his fellow Democrats want to do away with this constitutional provision by legislative action (instead of a vote of the people), is precisely because it would weaken TABOR’s spending limits!
Heath goes on to falsely contend that A-G’s provision that directs all funds above the 6% cap to capital construction jobs is unnecessary, because such “worthy” projects are “automatically funded in good years.” However, for the last two “good” years under our Democrat-dominated legislature, these things were obviously underfunded since most of our roads and bridges are apparently falling apart. Someone may also want to inform Heath that this is not a good year, which one would think would be an argument in favor of maintaining the requirement not doing away with it. Nonetheless, doing his best fear-mongering, gotta-do-it-right-now impression of Barack Obama, Heath also threatens that if A-G is not dispensed with immediately, “Colorado will never recover from the current recession.”
What Heath neglected to report is that the 6% limit in A-G can be overridden by a 2/3 vote of both houses of the legislature—something that should be easily achievable if its effects are so dire. In addition, as Mark Hillman wrote in the Rocky Mt. News this week, there is little chance that Colorado’s economy is going to expand by anything close to 6% for the foreseeable future. So what’s the big rush? If Heath wants to remove the spending cap permanently (the real goal of the Democrats and one misguided Republican) the right way, he needs to present it to the people of Colorado for a vote. Otherwise it’s just another liberal power grab (and end-run around the constitution) designed to allow Democrats to engage in their favorite activity: unlimited spending. While making threats and deceitful arguments may have worked with Obama’s stimulus bill, hopefully they won’t in our state, even if Heath truly believes that he “can fool all of the people some of the time.”