The Colorado Sun recently built a compelling case against Colorado’s TABOR amendment, if not for the fact that it rests on completely false premises.
Reporter Brian Eason’s most recent TABOR-bashing article begins by stating, “When Colorado voters approved the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights in 1992, supporters said that the measure’s new spending cap would allow the state government to grow with the economy. Decades later, the evidence is clear: That wasn’t true.”
Let’s examine what is wrong with this statement and why it sets the rest of the article up for failure.
Economy vs. state
Contrary to the article’s framing, TABOR’s supporters said the new measure’s spending cap would allow the state to grow reasonably, in line with population growth and higher costs due to inflation.
No supporter of TABOR ever claimed or desired that the state government should grow at the same pace as the state’s economy; such presumptions actually fly in the face of the very essence of American government.
Also contrary to the article’s findings, research conducted at Independence Institute earlier this year suggests a quite different picture: Colorado’s state government has grown faster than the TABOR amendment ever intended, and according to proxies for government growth, even faster than Colorado’s economy.
Here were some of the findings:
- When adjusted for population and inflation, state spending has grown at an average rate of 6 percent, while the state’s GDP has grown at an average rate of 5 percent.
- State employment has grown three times faster than private employment.
- Again, when adjusted for population and inflation, lobbyist incomes have grown 10 times faster than real median household incomes, highlighting the state government’s growing role in picking winners and losers.
- Effective tax burdens have increased even though a wider tax base should mean that taxpayers pay less.
The proper role of government
Why do we have a government? First and foremost, to protect individual liberties, and secondarily to provide basic services such as policing and infrastructure.
But some Coloradans—including opponents of TABOR—think government should provide other services, because they think it could do so better than if left to the private sector, markets, and individual choice.
But, even if that were true, state government is clearly failing by TABOR’s opponents’ own standards.
If the government were effectively providing such services, it should be able to do so more efficiently—at less cost per taxpayer over time—not more.
Also, when the government creates a program like Medicaid, meant to provide health care for those who cannot afford it, it should aim to facilitate so much prosperity that Colorado could eventually eliminate the program.
Instead, 1 in 5 people are on Medicaid despite a poverty rate of 8.2 percent, and enrollment has grown 10 times faster than the state’s population, yet somehow, it still isn’t enough.
In a similar vein, Eason states that Colorado’s general fund has shrunk dramatically relative to personal income, and that Colorado’s tax burdens are lower than the rest of the country as if these are bad things.
Actually, it’s an unintended admission that TABOR has helped generate incredible income growth for Coloradans while preserving more of their personal economic freedom and independence from the tax-and-spend legislature.
The fact is, TABOR remains popular for a reason; its opponents just hope they can repeat false or misguided claims enough times for people to give up their constitutional taxpayer protections.
Nash Herman is a fiscal policy analyst at Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver
