Progressives pride themselves on being members of the reality-based community. This preference for reality directly pits them against today’s GOP, the members of which are almost uniformly enthralled by ideological fantasies that involve assumptions unsupported by facts (e.g. low taxes on the wealthy support growth) and that result in simplistic, often destructive policies (e.g., cutting government spending during a recession). Nowhere is this attitude more evident than in the battle over how to finance government.

In Missouri this dynamic has played itself out in what threatens to become a yearly ritual: the effort to impose TABOR-style spending caps. This year is no exception; GOP legislators are  proposing a a resolution(HJR 43) that would place on the November ballot a constitutional amendment to enact a TABOR variant, a tax and expenditure limit or TEL:

The proposal, which would amend the Missouri Constitution, would limit the growth in annual state spending to the inflation rate plus the percentage change in population for Missouri. Any extra revenue would help pay off state debt, cover emergencies or go back to taxpayers as temporary tax cuts.

Similar efforts to handcuff future legislators have failed in the past, but there are two factors that could make a difference this year. First, Missouri’s plantation master, Rex Sinquefield, supports the concept and has supplied his main man in the House, Speaker Steve Tilley (R-106), with a sizeable payout. Second, the inevitable Democratic quisling has been secured, in this case, Rep. Chris Kelley Kelly (D-24), who thinks it will be fine to handicap future legislators as long as the cap is high enough – based on 2008 revenue – and does not take effect right away, but is delayed until state revenues reach that highpoint.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it’s never a good idea to decrease legislative flexibility, particularly when dealing with future conditions that cannot be accounted for in the current environment. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, here are numerous factors that belie the seeming simplicity of this approach to enforced government spending restraint.

— No existing measure of inflation correctly captures the growth in the cost of the kinds of services purchased in the public sector, so the inflation adjustment generally is not sufficient to allow the continuation of existing services. State governments spend much of their money on education and health care, which typically have cost increases greater than the general rate of inflation. […]

— The subpopulations that state governments serve tend to grow more rapidly than the overall population growth used in the formula. […]

— The rigidities of formula-based budgeting, such as a population-plus-inflation growth factor, do not allow funding of new priorities that may be embraced by the public, such as reduced class sizes or more stringent corrections policies. They do not allow states to adapt to federal mandates that require states to spend more in areas such as security and education, and they may have no provisions for emergency spending on natural disasters or other unanticipated problems.

— A TEL based on a population-plus-inflation growth factor, or any other artificial formula, moves the budget process away from the careful weighing of competing priorities and consideration of the value of new initiatives and toward a process defined by sterile limits that require the shrinking of government services in most years.

Most damming, of course, is the Colorado experience with its TABOR law which had a disastrous effect on the state. Speaker Tilley seems to think that this new effort to limit future finance options is  “very, very different” from the Colorado law, but it is difficult to figure how it really differs in substance, or how it answers any of the objections outlined above.

Of course, the Missouri TEL wouldn’t take effect until state revenues have recovered significantly, but even in the highwater year of 2008, revenues were arguably not sufficient for the state’s needs. Rep. Ginese Monticello (D-66) expressed concerns about education and social services in Missouri under the proposed formula:

Even if I could get all the money in the world for education I have some concerns for social services as well. So, it seems to me that we’re kind of locking some groups into a continued future of being under funded when our needs in our state are becoming greater with unemployment still at really high levels

Bear in mind that Missour’s infrastructure was in sad shape long before the recession; Missouri’s bridges, for example, are the seventh worst in the nation in terms of decay. Also stop to consider that Missouri is already a very low tax state – 43rd lowest in the nation.

Wouldn’t this low tax status combined with the need for greater social, educational, and physical infrastructure investment lead one to think that Missouri’s legislators would be better employed if they were to spend some time overhauling the moribund state tax system, or perhaps looking for some revenue enhancements, like setting up a mechanism for collecting Internet sales taxes, or raising cigarette taxes that are also much lower than in most states? But such rational activity, of course, would mean abandoning ideology for reality.

I voted FOR the casinos’ Prop A Amendment last fall, knowing I was about to get snookered. No matter what the casinos claimed, I knew that the additional tax money it raised would never go to education. Didn’t you? Because if you didn’t, you’re a fool. Look at the history: the casinos made the same promise in 1992, and then the legislature played a shell game with the money. I voted against it back then, and with history as my teacher, I … did an about face?

Yes, and it galled me to help them make a fool out of me, but I’d seen the forecasts of what was about to happen to Missouri state revenues. We were going to need every penny we could get from whatever source, especially since Republicans hold the purse strings.

In her latest newsletter, Representative Jeanne Kirkton–D-Webster Groves–confirmed my expectation about what would happen to the funds:

A shell game is being played with the Proposition A casino revenue approved by voters in November 2008. Once again, voters were promised the money would be additional revenue for public schools but instead it is being used to replace $108 million in general revenue for other, non-education purposes.  There is no new money for education or increased state funding for our schools from Prop A funds.

Oh well. Considering the fiscal lunacy of the current majority party, I can’t regret voting for that damned Prop A amendment. A hundred million is a hundred million, even if it’s going to pay to keep state agencies staffed, or whatever they’re using it for, instead of reducing class sizes.

The Republican lunacy I refer to includes bringing up again in the House a TABOR-like amendment–and this time passing it (82-78). Let us hope that cooler heads prevail in the Senate and that we are not forced to vote down this constitutional amendment in 2010, because it is a dangerous idea.  The amendment would limit future state spending to what it is now, plus inflation and population growth. How sane is it to try to limit all future spending to the level we suffer during a year of severe recession–perhaps one even headed toward a depression? At a time when our state revenues are being sucked into a pit of quicksand, the wingnuts would like to plant a heavy fist on the budget and push it deeper into the mire. I suppose it would be rude to use the word “crackpots” at this juncture, wouldn’t it?

To the Republican way of thinking, though, this is the ideal time to get such a constitutional amendment on the ballot . They relish–a la Grover Norquist and bathtubs–a chance to slash welfare for all those shiftless poor people. And keep it gone.

They have a bonny fine start on that goal: Regular readers of this site know they’re turning down an abso-freakin’-lutely free hundred million dollars for Medicaid.

And that bit of vengeance on people for the sin of being poor almost pales in the face of turning away hundreds of millions in stimulus money.  The $4.3 billion in federal recovery funds that Missouri is slated to get is divided into two categories: funds for new projects to rev up the economy and funds to prevent budget cuts, that is, to keep the state’s economy from spiraling downward. Republicans are fine with spending the first kind of funds for one time projects like highway improvements. They’re not fine with preventing state budget cuts.

They pretend that their revulsion with those funds is a principled stand against overspending. But their ethical code is selective. They’ll take the $500 million for education funding, thank you very much, but they’re thumbing their noses at federal dollars for senior services, mental health services, and children’s health care.

Mind you, I’m not complaining that Republicans took the education funds. We need them, so it’s fortunate that the right wingers are savvy enough to realize that cutting education spending would incense even the voters who don’t mind seeing poor children go without health care. All I’m saying is: stinginess and callousness do not a code of ethics make.  Especially when refusing to take those funds means that health care jobs get cut and that our already reeling state economy will take another hit as a result.

Anyway, the voters of Missouri got flim-flammed again into voting the way casinos wanted them to last fall. Thank goodness for small favors.

Allen TABOR Icet (R-Wildwood) chairs the House Budget Committee. How like the Republicans to put someone who hates spending in charge of spending. In 2006, Icet sponsored Missouri’s version of the ruinous constitutional amendment that Colorado adopted in 1993. Icet’s proposal failed to make it through the legislature (and failed as an initiative petition as well that year). Since he couldn’t get a bad bill through in ’06 or ’07, he naturally decided to try getting a worse bill through this year. No go. The House members always go for his foolishness, but saner heads have prevailed in the Senate–where odious bills often go to die.

TABOR ruins a state government’s finances because it limits the state’s income to the inflation rate, which generally runs 2 1/2 to 3 percent. Many years, the income of residents and businesses grows more than that, at, say, 5 percent. If a state’s income can’t keep up with the overall growth in income, then services suffer.

A Fact Sheet from the Missouri Budget Project puts “services suffer” in more concrete terms. Look at how, in education alone, Colorado plummeted:

• Average teacher salaries dropped from 30th in the nation in 1992 (before TABOR) to 50th by 2001.
• Higher education funding per resident student dropped by 31 percent.
• Tuition at public universities increased 21 percent between 2002 and 2005 to offset the loss of state aid.

But the man who chairs our House Budget Committee doesn’t think such cuts to services would be adequate. He not only wants to borrow Colorado’s bad idea, he wants to take it one ruinous step further, unsatisfied unless Missouri is dead last.

The bill Icet proposed this year would not only limit the growth of state income to the rate of inflation but would also mandate that if the state had a lower tax rate this year than last year, for example, we could never return to last year’s rate. It’s as if a family got its annual wage slashed by $5,000 one year, and, worse yet, knew that the wage earner was never again going to get a raise.

Just put a “y” in place of the “t” in Icet’s name and you’ve got him pegged. Him and most of the Republican House members.

Fortunately, the coalition that would oppose a TABOR amendment on the ballot is exceptionally strong and varied, even to the point of including the K.C. Chamber of Commerce–no hotbed of liberalism.

What puzzles me about Icet is that he’s the chair of the House Budget Committee, so it’s not like he doesn’t know about the budget shortfalls we face every year–and the more severe ones coming soon to a municipality near you. Yet he wants to hobble the state further.

Why? Is it just that he doesn’t give a rip about anyone who isn’t already wealthy? He seems not just contemptuous of the poor–take a guess at how he voted on the Medicaid cuts–but of anyone who couldn’t be bothered to get a Ph.D. in chemistry and earn a bundle working for Monsanto.

It’s unfair, though, to single out Ebenezer Allen Icet. Considering his TABOR tunnel vision, you could say he’s more passionately stingy than his fellow Republicans–but not by much. They all appear to believe in potholed highways, 35 students to a class, and university tuition out of reach of most families.