TABOR

Our Milwaukee for Democracy (the DfA group here) is having our Meetup tonight. As I mentioned a few posts back, we are holding a 6 PM forum in addition to the usual Meetup. This month, we've got some guests in to talk about the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, or TABOR. My wife made a good point the other night (you can always count on her for that), that "Taxpayers' Bill of Rights" sounds like a good thing, and TABOR doesn't sound like anything at all, so how are we supposed to know that it's bad?

Well, for those of you not going to our Meetup tonight, here's some info on the proposed amendment (yes, it's a constitutional amendment), its history, and why it's bad.

In 2002, Wisconsin elected a Democratic Governor for the first time in 16 years. By the time Doyle was elected, Wisconsin was in a real quandry: billions in the hole, getting far less back from the feds than we paid in taxes, and among the worst in terms of how much we pay in taxes and fees overall (individuals, anyway--Wisconsin gives away the farm, sometimes literally, to corporations).

Whose fault was that? Well, the Bush economy was partly to blame, and, as I implied, the lax corporate tax structure was too. Even the very, very business-friendly Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted that "the state's tax laws for companies are so porous because of exemptions and loopholes that financial officers can play by the rules and still find many ways to duck taxes." [UPDATE: Monday's Journal Sentinel cited a 63%-37% ratio of tax revenue from individuals and from business. I wish I remembered, or could find again, what that ratio was in 1986, when Thompson first took the governor's reins.]

But much of the blame, in your humble folkbum's humble opinion, lies at the feet of Tommy Thompson and his very creative use of the veto, combined with asinine public relations stunts like issuing refund checks instead of fixing the devastating (and very draining) public schools financing system.

Republicans, though, newly emboldened by their fresh control over both houses in the legislature, if not the governor's seat, felt that the fault really lay with municipalities and local goverments being bloated, wasteful, greedy, and, most importantly, not them. Nooooo, wouldn't want to have to look at the culpabilty of business-friendly lawmakers now, would we? Can't get rid of those loopholes, no sirree.

Hence, the property tax freeze. The Republicans did their best to hamstring municipalities' abilities to raise necessary revenue. Governor Doyle vetoed the bill, and the veto stood in the state senate by just one vote. Beaten in that battle but not the war, many of the movement conservatives in the legislature have moved on now to TABOR. You know movement conservatism, right? That Grover Norquist "I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" conservatism that aims directly at every single social program--from Social Security to public schools--in attempt to make helpful government go away.

Katya Szabados at The Wisconsinite (a fine new publication out of Madison) did a story a couple of months back on ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, "a bipartisan membership association for conservative state lawmakers who share a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty." Many of Wisconsin's staunchest movement conservatives get both support (financial and otherwise) and ideas from this national network, and ALEC has had its hands in everything from school vouchers to anti-environmental legislation.

(This is scary: "[O]ne model bill [. . .] makes environmental protest a crime and increases penalties for animal rights or environmental groups that participate in activities 'with an intent to influence a governmental entity or the public to take a specific action.'" O. M. G.)

And ALEC has its hand in TABOR, too. One TABOR sponsor is state senator Bob "state-wide loser since 1994!" Welch, recently ALEC's Wisconsin chair and current opponent of Everyone's Favorite Senator™, Russ Feingold.

Katya Szabados writes it better than I could; allow me to quote her for a second:

TABOR would limit government spending to growth in population plus growth in inflation and require a two-thirds vote in both houses of the legislature to increase income, sales and franchise taxes. Wisconsin voters would need to approve tax increases or lift spending limits via referendum. The bill would establish a "rainy day" fund and send all surpluses directly back to taxpayers.

Wisconsin's TABOR is said to be based on a 1992 constitutional amendment in Colorado. [. . .] TABOR proponents claim it will make state government more accountable to the people and streamline state agencies, pushing them to be more efficient with less money. Lasee claims it is "the essence of Democracy" and "will require that elected officials explain what they're doing more often to the people they represent." [. . .] Opponents worry it could tie the hands of government faced with already tight budgets, leading to cuts in public services dear to Wisconsinites. Colorado officials, even some of those who advocated or voted for the legislation, are warning Wisconsin citizens to beware.

According to Phyllis Resnick from the Tax Center at the University of Denver, many companies consider Colorado "a nightmare to do business with" because of variable tax rates between counties. Wade Buchanan, President of the Colorado-based Bell Policy Center, a nonprofit public interest center, recently penned an anti- TABOR op-ed for the Wisconsin State Journal. In it, he concedes that TABOR sounds like a good idea, and that the majority of Colorado citizens agree with its primary tenants of limiting government expenditures and allowing citizens to approve tax increases.

However, Buchanan writes that TABOR "has shrunk Colorado's already-lean programs to anorexic levels. By 2000, Colorado had fallen to 50th in K-12 spending per $1,000 of personal income...spent less than most other states on public health care services (as a percent of GSP), was at the bottom in on-time immunization rates, was at the bottom in prenatal care, had the highest rate of uninsured low-income children in the nation, was almost last among states in high school graduation rates, ranked almost last in state investment in higher education and the arts, and had a growing list of unfunded highway projects." According to Buchanan, this occurred because, although personal income has grown since 1992, Colorado officials are faced with strict spending limits in the face of massive population growth along the Front Range. Higher incomes households are making enough to ignore cuts in public services, while the less wealthy are having a harder time.

My union president, Bob Lehmann of the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association, recently wrote that "all it takes is one built-in cost to rise at a rate faster than inflation (like health care), and the state will be forced to make significant cuts in other areas to offset the expenditure." Viola, mes amis. Let the shrinking and drowning begin.

The poor, the children, and the elderly are the ones hurt by drowning the government in a bathtub. If you're rich, you won't miss public schools because you can afford private ones. You won't miss the public transportation because you own a car or two or three. You won't miss the Medicaid because you can afford health care, elder care, insurance.

Unfortunately, we live in a state--and a country as a whole--where, as Howard Dean ineloquently pointed out by referencing the confederate flag--many people who are not rich vote against their own economic interests. The very Republican rural parts of Wisconsin will get killed by TABOR, while our legilslature sits by and does nothing to actually resolve the issues it faces, namely by aiming at corporate tax fairness.

I know you're probably sick of hearing me do this, but I'm going to plug Tim Carpenter again. Not only is he procedurally trying to kill TABOR in the senate, he's also been trying for years as a state legislator to force Wisconsin to close up those loopholes, and to add corporate accountability laws, so that we don't offer a company a huge break if they end up offshoring their jobs. Short of that kind of legislation, we will never have tax fairness and real relief for the taxpayer in Wisconsin. TABOR is an illusion, a sound-good piece of rope with which to hang ourselves.