TABOR-ites try to ignore Colorado

Greg Stanford's Sunday column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says that TABOR backers who fail to learn from Colorado's bad experiences may be doomed to repeat them.

Supporters of the new constitutional amendment, Bride of TABOR, insist this one is nothing like Colorado's. Then they defend what happened in Colorado and say it all worked great.

Stanford says:

Colorado squeezed its state finances into a straitjacket called the taxpayer bill of rights in 1992. TABOR, a constitutional amendment limiting the growth in public revenue, worked even better than advertised. Government shrunk drastically.

There were side effects, however - fiscal and political. First, services - health care, roads and bridges, schools and universities - worsened. Next, for the first time in 30 years, the Republican Legislature turned Democratic.

TABOR die-hards pooh-pooh the link between revenue caps, a Republican signature, and the Democratic takeover. Yet a crowning achievement of the new Legislature was a voter-approved suspension of TABOR.

So what lessons have Wisconsin Republicans drawn from the Colorado debacle? Amazingly, enact TABOR or something like it.

Read the rest.