Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations

This piece originally ran at townhall.com on Oct 28, 2005

A taxpayer revolt is sweeping the nation with a battle cry for a �Taxpayers� Bill of Rights.� The latest count finds activists working with legislators in at least 22 states, from Georgia to Alaska, California to Vermont, to enact a Taxpayers� Bill of Rights (TABOR), a tax-and-expenditure limit on state government that requires voter approval of spending over certain reasonable benchmarks.

Taxpayers are up in arms because politicians are wasting too much of their hard earned money, and they want it to stop. Taxpayers agree with Armey�s Axiom: No one spends someone else�s money as wisely as he spends his own. And they know politicians are one of three groups of people who regularly spend other people�s money�the other two being children and thieves (all three groups need adult supervision).

Most politicians only get adult supervision every election cycle. But we know that is not enough. They need to be watched 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They are stalked that often by the never satisfied tax-and-spend lobby that constantly roams the halls of state capitals in search of ever larger piles of tax dollars. But regular citizens are too busy leading productive lives to guard against the tax-grabbers with such persistence. What taxpayers rely on instead are the rules under which their elected officials must operate. Unfortunately, the rules in most states currently work against taxpayers.

Fortunately, the rules can be changed to defend taxpayers, and in some states they have been.

In Colorado, for instance, taxpayers since 1992 have been protected by the nation�s strongest TABOR. Colorado�s TABOR says that spending can increase each year by no more than the total increase in inflation plus population. If inflation goes up 3 percent and population increases 3 percent, they can spend 6 percent more than they did the year before. And if taxes bring in more than that, the extra money must be sent back to the taxpayers who earned it. If the politicians want to spend more than the rules allow, they must first get approval from the taxpayers through a referendum.

Coloradans acknowledged that politicians will be politicians, so they improved the rules to control their behavior�and it worked. The result: predictable, conservative growth in government spending, and increased economic growth. In the decade before TABOR, personal income grew sluggishly, the private sector added fewer jobs than government, Colorado�s economy performed below the national average, and zero dollars were refunded to taxpayers. In the next 10 years, with TABOR in place, the increase of private sector jobs was nine times that of government jobs, personal income growth almost doubled, Colorado�s economy performed well above the national average, and more than $3 billion in surplus taxes�about $3,000 per household�were refunded to the people who had earned them.

Seeing this success, when compared to the poor performance of their own states, is what pushes so many activists to fight to get the protections�and enjoy the same tax rebates�as they have in Colorado.

But the fight to enact TABOR to return control over growth in government to the people will not be easy and, once passed, will need vigilant defenders. The usual suspects will continue to mobilizing against it. Special interests who thrive on increased government spending will demonize the act and its core supporters. This can be seen right now in Colorado. There, the same big-government special interests who fought the creation of the best TABOR in the country are now trying to take it down and increase taxes. FreedomWorks has been helping to lead the grassroots charge to save the nation�s best taxpayer protection, but faces a multi-million dollar attack campaign from TABOR enemies.

Those who oppose TABOR, both in Colorado and around the country, are afraid of its effectiveness and its ability to do exactly what it has done in the Rocky Mountain State: create reasonable restraint on the government�s ability to dole out taxpayer dollars to their particular pet project.

It is up to the grassroots activists who support limited government to stand up to these special interests, like they did, and are now doing, in Colorado. This important change will not happen without grassroots pressure. FreedomWorks is already organized and leading the charge in your state. If you want to help put the guardrails on the politicians where you live, become a FreedomWorks member and we will provide you with the tools to make it happen. As Sam Adams said, �It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.� Together, we can fan the flames of taxpayer revolt against excess and wasteful spending and make real change happen.