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Our Christmas Gift to all Taxpayers

Our Christmas Gift to all Taxpayers

As you may know, I’m dyslexic. Even though I wrote Santa a letter every year growing up, he never visited. I only recently realized I was sending them to Satan.

Speaking of Christmas, all of our hard work protecting our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights continues to pay you dividends. Here is what our work is giving Colorado for Christmas…

Fiscal Policy Center

When the pandemic hit early last year, economists at the legislature predicted that in the 2021-22 fiscal year, general fund revenues would fall 17 percent, or $2.37 billion, short of pre-pandemic expectations. Legislators and big-government shills told us that state government would be crippled. They told us that if we don’t abolish TABOR, we wouldn’t be able to fund essential services like road construction and education.

Fast forward a year-and-a-half. On Friday, Legislative Council Staff (LCS) released its December 2021 Economic & Revenue Forecast. They now anticipate general fund revenues to total $15.43 billion. That’s $4 billion – yes, “billion” with a “B” – or 35 percent more than what they told us in May of last year! It’s $1.65 billion more than they had projected before anyone knew about an impending global pandemic. And these figures do not include the approximately $6 billion the state received from the federal government in pandemic relief or the billions from TABOR-exempt fees created by this year’s state “transportation” bill. In other words, the state is absolutely flush with cash.

Thanks to TABOR, excess revenue means refunds for taxpayers. LCS predicts Coloradans will receive nearly $5.5 billion in tax refunds over the next three years. Now, imagine if we had abolished TABOR in the panic of doom-and-gloom forecasts. Well, we don’t have to imagine.

In 2005, voters suspended TABOR, through Referendum C, for five years and permanently decreased future refunds. Since then, Coloradans have lost $30 billion in refunds and will lose billions more indefinitely in the future. That should be more than enough to quench the progressives’ never-ending thirst for more money.

Let’s remember these lessons next time they try to scare us into suspending or abolishing TABOR.

You can read more about the issues our Fiscal Policy Center is covering on our website and Complete Colorado.

Ever heard the political saying that if you aren’t at the table, you’re on the menu?  Well, as Joshua Sharf explains, hungry public-sector unions are eyeing local government taxpayers as an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Here’s Sherrie’s latest on Jena Griswold’s hypocrisy around dark money.

In my latest, I claim for the CRT and Identity Politics folks to win, they’ll have to cancel MLK and here is how they’ll do it.

Constitutional Law

Rob Natelson, our Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence, just gave up a lucrative constitutional consulting practice, in part to spend more time at the Independence Institute. He’ll remain a weekly columnist for The Epoch Times and on the Board of Scholars of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a trade group for conservative and moderate state legislators.

Think Freedom and Merry Christmas!!

-Jon