3.28.2005
GOP Governors Fight Tax Limits (WashingtonPost.com)
Foes of Big Government Blame Crunch on Cuts in Federal Aid
By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 27, 2005; Page A04
DENVER -- Gov. Bill Owens (R) has been crisscrossing the country for years promoting the virtues of this state's strict constitutional limits on government spending. He has repeatedly urged other states to adopt restrictions of their own, based on Colorado's "Taxpayer Bill of Rights" amendment, known here as TABOR.
But this summer, Owens says, he'll be traversing his own mountainous state pushing the opposite message. Midway through his second term, Owens is working to persuade Coloradans to suspend the limits he championed and let the state government spend $3 billion more in tax money than TABOR would allow.
Owens thus becomes another low-tax, limited-government advocate who has found those principles hard to hold onto amid a sluggish economy and a sharply diminished flow of federal money to the states.
In the past two years, Republican governors including Nevada's Kenny Guinn, Idaho's Dirk Kempthorne, Georgia's Sonny Perdue and Ohio's Bob Taft have dumped no-new-taxes pledges to push for major new revenue and increased state spending.
(More ... GOP Governors Fight Tax Limits (washingtonpost.com)) ¶ 11:01
By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 27, 2005; Page A04
DENVER -- Gov. Bill Owens (R) has been crisscrossing the country for years promoting the virtues of this state's strict constitutional limits on government spending. He has repeatedly urged other states to adopt restrictions of their own, based on Colorado's "Taxpayer Bill of Rights" amendment, known here as TABOR.
But this summer, Owens says, he'll be traversing his own mountainous state pushing the opposite message. Midway through his second term, Owens is working to persuade Coloradans to suspend the limits he championed and let the state government spend $3 billion more in tax money than TABOR would allow.
Owens thus becomes another low-tax, limited-government advocate who has found those principles hard to hold onto amid a sluggish economy and a sharply diminished flow of federal money to the states.
In the past two years, Republican governors including Nevada's Kenny Guinn, Idaho's Dirk Kempthorne, Georgia's Sonny Perdue and Ohio's Bob Taft have dumped no-new-taxes pledges to push for major new revenue and increased state spending.
(More ... GOP Governors Fight Tax Limits (washingtonpost.com)) ¶ 11:01
