TABOR: Something to Watch

TABOR amendments are cropping up around the country as various conservative groups try to follow through on their ‘shrink government no matter what’ policies. TABOR stands for ‘Taxpayer Bill of Rights’ and is a state level constitutional amendment that restricts the growth of state spending to a highly restrictive formula: population growth plus inflation. The problem with this is that once states start to have economic problems any formulaic policy eliminates their ability to spend money on projects or activities that might build infrastructure or otherwise help the state to recover, or grow at all. Tellingly the only state to adopt a TABOR clause, Colorado, has just voted to get rid of it. During the TABOR years Colorado dropped close to the bottom of all states in education spending and saw its number of children without health care coverage rise — from 15% to 27% of poor children. The vote to eliminate TABOR in Colorado is a major blow to people like Grover Norquist and the Cato Institute whose anti-tax mantra has been such a driving force behind the Republican surge over the past two or three decades. Kansas is a state in the process of considering a TABOR amendment of its own, and now the Colorado example is being used by progressive politicians and advocates there. Perhaps as the middle class starts to see the safety nets it relies on in hard times shreddded by the right wing the realization will set in that a balance needs to be struck, and the counter attack can begin.

I just don’t like the idea of TABOR-style constitutional restrictions on policy making: they handicap a state, and too often are merely a veneer to cover aggressive conservative attacks on the poor. We have enough class warfare being conducted by the Republicans in Washington — case in point the budget cuts now being discussed — we can do without it being constitutionally enshrined around the country at the state level.