From: Mike Spalding, Chairman, Jeffco Libertarian Party Affiliate:
Penn Pfiffner, a former chair of the Colorado Libertarian Party and a former state legislator, is presenting the benefits of TABOR to local groups in Colorado and around the nation. He is giving talks in many of the 21 states currently considering implementing TABOR. At the Independence Institute Wednesday night, a record turnout of Libertarians from Jeffco, Denver and Arapahoe affiliates were privileged to hear from him and from freedom speaker and author, Fred Holden.
For those of you who missed the meeting or missed taking notes, here are the highlights:
How TABOR works
TABOR automatically grows government by inflation and population increases. It also sets aside money in an emergency reserve account that can't be raided by the politicians. This can only be used to provide for unexpected costs like the Haymen fire. And, the part that everyone whining about TABOR leaves out, anytime the government wants more taxes it can ask. Recently voters have approved increased cigarette taxes, increased RTD taxes (fastrax), and extended the SCFD (polar bear) taxes.
Forget all the crying about revenue shortfalls. With TABOR and current population growth and inflation rates, the state revenue DOUBLES every 13 years.
How TABOR has saved us:
When you compare the 5 states cutting spending the most with the 5 states raising spending the most, personal income growth was 20% greater in the 5 states cutting the most. Less government = faster growth.
Before TABOR, Colorado's spending grew 89%! in ten years.
Without TABOR we could have ended up like California. They boosted their spending so much during the boom years that they ended up $38 BILLION dollars in debt when the bubble burst. Colorado's shortfall is just a couple hundred million.
How the bad guys are trying to trash TABOR:
Several columnists and a few reporters have been softening up the public with repeated editorials and articles bemoaning the woes of TABOR. You may even have heard that TABOR hurts us in a recession. Actually TABOR only limits increases in revenue - it doesn't even operate in a recession.
Recently our 'representatives' pulled a stunt to subvert TABOR and grab a one time-chunk of revenue. The details are messy, but the key to their sneakiness was to declare that a decade is 19 years long.
Now they are using the PIG strategy. They want to peg TABOR to Personal Income Growth. This will vastly increase the growth of our taxes. Watch for more on stopping this upcoming ballot initiative.
How you can help save TABOR
Send a letter or an email to Governor Owens urging him to veto anything that changes TABOR
Have Penn Pfiffner speak to a group (Rotary, etc.) with which you are affiliated.
Help Ralph Shnelvar who has volunteered to work with Penn to get the support of Milton Friedman or a similarly respected economist.
Read the article from the Wall Street Journal at http://nvtabor.com/Articles/WSJ_tabor.htm
Pass around this email, links to www.saveTABOR.com and http://i2i.org/TABOR2003.aspx
Stop calling it TABOR. Its the TAXPAYERS bill of rights. People are more likely to want to keep a taxpayer's bill of rights.
Recent Comments