In his inaugural address, Pres. Barack Obama dedicated himself to "remaking America." State Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, is similarly fired up to shake Colorado to its core. Everyone seems to be thinking big these days.
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This morning, Gov. Bill Ritter signed Senate Bill 228, which ends the Arveschoug-Bird provision allowing general-fund spending to grow 6 percent each year and replaces it with a far less restrictive rubric based on personal income. Morse, one of the bill’s sponsors, sold the measure as a way to shed the few remaining constraints on Colorado’s budget.
According to the Denver Business Journal, Morse told the audience at this morning's bill signing: "In the late 1400s, very few people believed the Earth was round. By the early 1500s, we knew what was going on. The same thing's going to happen with this bill...This is a fight for the soul of Colorado and it's just beginning."
A fight for the "soul of Colorado"? Really?
Morse truly believes he is on some kind of righteous mission. He isn't alone, either. Shortly after Ritter signed SB 228 into law, the Bell Policy Center, a Denver-based liberal think tank, filled in the details on the left's plan to raise taxes without limit.
Fiscal liberals have often spoken in broad strokes of "untangling" or "rebalancing" Colorado's budget formulas, which invariably includes discussion of permanently neutering the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights. With the expiry of Referendum C, a 5-year time-out from TABOR's limit on state spending, Democrats are scrambling for a way to extend their spending spree. A plan to do so in the name of an education "savings account" was trounced at the polls last November, so there's little time left to be circumspect. The plan is now, and has been all along, the repeal of TABOR.
"We need to permanently lift the TABOR revenue limit," says the Bell in this morning's e-mail. "And we need to modernize and update our tax structure to make sure it's fair and generates enough revenue moving forward to support the critical public structures that will underpin our future prosperity."
That second part isn't difficult to translate; the battle plan is simple. Repeal TABOR, then raise taxes. General Morse leads the charge.
Of course, if the Republicans offered a non-criminal....
On June 6th, 2009 Socrates says:
....non-tax-dodging candidate, instead of Ed "Cocaine Deal" Jones, then we wouldn't have the problem of Mr. Morse trying to take, take, and take some more of our money.
Socrates