Blue States Vote on a Taxpayer Bill of Rights
By JOHN FUND, Portland, Maine
Most of the attention on the Nov. 3 off-year elections is on governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia, which Republicans are hoping to sweep. But voters in two liberal states on opposite ends of the country will also take up measures to limit spending. The outcomes will give us a clear sense of the public mood toward runaway spending.
Maine and Washington are both more liberal and secular than the rest of the country. Barack Obama carried each state with identical 17-point margins, and both have powerful public employee unions that have driven up the cost of government to the point that a backlash has developed.
The voter-initiated measures on next month’s ballot are modeled after Colorado’s 1992 Taxpayer Bill of Rights (Tabor). They prohibit state spending from increasing faster than the growth of state population plus inflation in any given year. Extra revenue would be rebated back to the taxpayers, and if officials wanted to raise taxes beyond the limit they would have to seek a public referendum.
Read More at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704224004574489252589009002.html
Why can’t Wisconsin have this?
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