The far right’s policy ideas are inconsistent with our values, so it’s no surprise that right wingers feel the need to lie about their policies. How could George W. Bush have convinced us to invade Iraq if he hadn’t lied about Iraq’s weapons capabilities and connection with Al Qaeda? How could the Republicans have passed their giant tax cuts for the wealthy without lying about who truly benefited?
It’s no surprise, then, that the right wing is already testing out the deceptions they’ll use to swindle us into supporting TABOR. Lane Hiltunen’s column last week is hyper-efficient in this regard, lying both about the facts and about what I have said about TABOR.
Lane accuses me of saying Colorado “terminated” TABOR. Untrue! I said Colorado suspended it. That’s just what they did.
Then come “the talking points.” The first claim is that Colorado’s TABOR problems resulted from Colorado’s bad economy. Every state has had economic problems in the Bush years, thanks to economic policies that stifle prosperity by depressing wages for ordinary people and cutting taxes for very wealthy people. (Lane erroneously claims Sept. 11, drought, and forest fires are to blame, rather than TABOR.) Since the 1992 enactment, Colorado was falling behind the other states in many measures of public good, including public health and education, even during the Clinton economic boom.
What happened? As I’ve said before, TABOR doesn’t allow government to respond quickly to changed conditions. It took Colorado years to progress from recognizing the harm wreaked by TABOR’s spending limits to actually suspending them.
Fundamentally, the problem is that public services we need – public safety, education, healthcare, etc. – grow in cost faster than inflation, but more slowly than the economy. Rainy day fund or no, our ability to afford these vital services will diminish over time under TABOR, and that is just what the right wing wants, to limit the services our state government provides. The “rainy day fund” will not fix TABOR’s problems.
In the end, we won’t save anything. Cutting people’s health insurance means they will go to the emergency room instead, and only when their conditions have gotten much worse and more costly to heal. Likewise, cutting education just leaves children unprepared to become economically productive citizens.
The biggest deception is in saying taxes cost jobs. Southern Maine is booming and rural Maine is hurting, but they have the same tax laws. Lane mentions timber industry job losses, but doesn’t tell you that those job losses come from increasing mechanization of the timber industry. Taxes are not the culprit. Learn more about it: Google on “Colorado Tabor”!
Any business owner will tell you that a quality workforce, infrastructure and services, and location, are much more important than taxes. However, a quality workforce only comes through investing in education. Infrastructure and services cost public money, unless you want to put tollbooths on all the roads and charge students for textbooks and footballs.
Businesses need consumers for their products. If every Maine worker can earn enough to make ends meet, and if the tax system can fund needed services without demanding too much from those least able to pay, businesses will have greater sales opportunities. Lane professes confusion as to what progressive tax reform is (even though I have explained it multiple times and used small words), but it’s simple. Reduce taxes for those least able to pay, and make tourists, large businesses and wealthy people pay their fair share. There’s really nothing wrong with more fairly sharing the responsibility for keeping our society going.
Sharing prosperity is a lot better than going through bankruptcy!
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