Today, I attended a breakfast meeting in Denver with other like-minded fiscal conservatives. Bill Cadman and Kent Lambert headlined the event. Several points stood out to me from the meeting.
First, the legislature has yet to cut costs to last year's levels. All of the talk of the $600 million budgetary shortfall is a decrease in the budgetary increases-so far. However, they fear that another $400 million in cuts may be required later this year. They claim that the Democrats are borrowing from cash funds (separate accounts for specific purposes, such as auto fees) to help balance the budget instead of making real cuts.
Also, TABOR (the Taypayers Bill of Rights) is not the cause of the budgetary problems. Per the constitution, the state may budget up to a six percent increase in the budget from the previous year. Since Colorado must balance its budget and the governor and the legislature proposed governmental increases up to the limit, the legislature must make emergency cuts to meet the actual revenue that the state receives. These revenues are below the TABOR cap.
During the question and answer period, somebody asked about how the Republican legislators can get their message out, thus bypassing the dominant liberal mass media. This led to fellow blogger Joshua Sharf providing a demonstration of Twitter.
I do have a minor criticism of Kent Lambert. He stated that we should "thin out" the weak Republicans (those who do not toe the party line). However, that seems like the wrong thing to do. It would be better to support more liberal Republicans, especially in swing districts, than to accept the default of the Democrat. It would be better to have a majority with a fiscally conservative platform (even with weak Republican votes) than to have "strong" conservatives perpetually in the minority.
by Civil Sense
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