Barry Paulson and the Unarticulated Premise

Barry Paulson is the University of Colorado economics professor pulled in to testify before a Wisconsin legislative committee to shill for the Bride of TABOR.  After wreaking havoc in Colorado, Paulson is not content to keep the carnage west of the Mississippi.

Paulson is the traveling carny barker with the unarticulated premise.  He starts with an assumption that taxes are too high and that government spending is off the charts.  He never gets to first base.  In all of his work, he never analyzes the impact of the cuts and the consequences of the cuts.  When he does pose alternatives (Solving Colorado's Educational Finance Problems), he glibly leaps to privatization, ignoring all of the modern-day skimming, bilking, overcharging, fraud, kickbacks, and graft associated with everything from garbage collection to Haliburton's war profiteering- costs that far exceed any government waste.

His premise, along with the rest of the Neocons, is a fraud: they never proved that spending was in excess. And when it comes to taxes, they play on the general populace as they shift the tax burden from the wealthiest to the poorest.

I decided to look into Paulson's research:

Learning to Live Within Colorado’s Tax & Spending Limits

A Collection of Papers from the Independence Institute

(The Independence Institute is yet another conservative "think tank" devoted to "non-partisan, non-profit public policy research," which just happens to support positions favored by Republicans.)

And then one paper from the Center on Budget Priorities: THE FLAWED “POPULATION PLUS INFLATION” FORMULA: Why TABOR’s Growth Formula Doesn’t Work.  This paper knocks the socks off of the twenty-some papers Paulson used to deforest Colorado's state and local governments.

Time for John Gard, R-Peshtigo, and Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend to step forward and be recognized for the frauds that they are.

I wish Paulson or one of these Republican Frankensteins who keep bringing TABOR back to life would once, just once, go through the exercise of deciding spending limits for one basic service, like the Fire Department in Milwaukee. Service levels are based on response time to every corner of the city, minimum staffing levels for on-duty firefighters, and a considerable number of related expenses, many of which are mandated by state government. Boys, don't forget those fire stations need heat and electricity!

• They will either have to lower the quality of the service below safe guidelines, or
• They will have to raise taxes above their beloved TABOR guidelines.

The right-wing controlled legislature is a sideshow carnival peddling a phony 'tax freeze' to the rubes, but it is a son-of-a-bitch when it comes to facing reality, which is what the voters of Colorado had to do after a couple of years of TABOR.

How about a fair discussion?  Take the Madison or Milwaukee Fire Departments and tell us what you will cut and the consequences. Then we get five minutes of rebuttal.

Instead, in the Republican-controlled legislature, we get the old carnival "knock down the weighted milk bottles" game, with the giant stuffed animal prize of lower taxes and more "efficient" government just out of reach.

Comments

[Sven]

Well said, Paul. Having lived through and reported on TABOR in Colorado, I think the carnival barker analogy is dead on. I do have to take issue with your fire department challenge, however.

TABOR was sold as a simple, common-sense approach to running government when in fact it made it infinitely more complex. The ballot measure was an elegant, 40-word statement on fiscal sobriety, while the actual amendment was 1,500 words of Talmudic jibberish that has kept the courts busy for 16 years. People voted for the Declaration of Independence and got Ted Kaczynski's manifesto.

That's the problem I have with the fire department example. I think the major mistake TABOR opponents made in Colorado, and continue to make elsewhere, is trying to explain the ins and outs of budgetary decisionmaking. This plays right into the hands of the barkers. They'll claim that governments intentionally complicate the process and use jargon to hide tax increases, and that TABOR will clarify the process.

A better tactic for the opposition, IMO, is to demonstrate how gobsmacking insane it would be to run a household budget using the TABOR formula. I can picture the campaign commercial right now: John Gard trying to explain to a couple with three kids and a mortgage why their budget baseline should be the husband's salary as a grocery clerk in high school.

[Jon]

Good points Sven.

I think it's long overdue for Democrats to step up and claim the title of fiscal responsibility. It seems like today's Democrats are scared of the old "Tax and Spend" label that Republicans used so effectively. I think we need to label the R's as the party of "borrow and spend," at least on a national level (35% growth in the Federal government in the last 5 years; record deficits).

On the local level, I'd love to see Democrats ask the R's exactly what would they cut? Police service? Fire service?

Let's ask the victims of Katrina what the role of government should be in their daily life, and whether the tax cuts for the rich have worked out well for them.

Jon