By: Andrew Server
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Elitist Proposition CC is currently being peddled to us by our state government leadership. It is our state’s latest attempt to set into motion runaway and largely unchecked government growth. It permanently dismantles a provision of our Colorado state Constitution, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR).
The Taxpayer Bill of Rights is the people’s check against runaway government spending and gluttonous government growth. With the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, whenever the state collects more taxes than it budgeted for, the people receive a refund unless there is a vote to spend it. Consider the scenario- you are at a private institution and overpay for the good or service you receive. That institution rightly offers back to you the overage you paid. That, on a governmental level, is TABOR.
A good government budgets wisely and accordingly. This TABOR limitation serves as the people’s check that our government will at least strive to do so. The limitation even takes into consideration population growth and inflation so as to not overburden the state with too stringent of a revenue block.
CC takes our check on how the state spends its money and bestows it upon a far-removed auditor who is supposed to ensure that the legislature correctly uses the mis-budgeted funds. It is foolhardy to expect that bureaucracy will check bureaucracy better than and in favor of the people.
Critics of our Taxpayer Bill of Rights claim that the due refund each individual receives is meager and that their combined value would be better directed to the oft-pitied institutions of state transportation and education. My response to this is multifaceted, but in short, it boils down to principle. We, the taxpayers, should be only expected to provide the government with what it has budgeted for. It is our money, not the government’s to exploit.
Some say that the government ought to be able to keep all of the money it makes. Thus, TABOR should be done away with. The rebuttal to this is simple: the government does not make money – it takes it.
What are hopefully only mistaken proponents of CC seek to misguide us, assuring that the measure does not raise taxes. This is a deceptive use of language. If the government is indeed taking in and keeping more money from you in taxes without TABOR than it would with it, how is that not an increase of tax burden on you, the taxpayer? The phraseology of the proposal is suited to the deception that its creators intended.
Should our constitutional Taxpayer Bill of Rights be destroyed, the blinders on the beast of our burgeoning government will be off, and it will run rampant, fueled by our taxpayer dollars. This election season, you have the ability to do your part in halting our insatiable state government from running. Do your part in upholding the Colorado Constitution and securing liberty for the taxpayers and people of Colorado by voting NO on the irreversible Proposition CC.
Concur with your well written article. A government, unrestrained by an informed voting populace, knows no bounds