TAX CUTS GOOD? — TAX INCREASES BAD?

“Small Government and Tax Cuts = Good!” Great slogan, too bad it doesn’t work out in the real world. Take a look at what’s going on in Colorado Springs right now —here’s where ideology meets reality. We lived in Colorado Springs in the ‘90s and saw for ourselves what the ultra-conservative political climate has wrought in this lovely town. Here’s the background.

In 1991 a man named Doug Bruce, an avid Conservative tax-hating small-government ideologue, managed to convince Colorado Springs voters to pass restrictive city tax legislation that continues to hamstring the city to this day. Check it out here at a local Colorado Springs newspaper, The Independent, and at The Denver Post. Colorado Springs is out of funds and cannot raise taxes to keep the city running, much less plan investments for any kind of economic future. In other words, Colorado Springs is the research experiment for where the small government/anti-tax Conservatives want to take the country — we can see what happens when tax cutting eliminates services that most communities take for granted.

The Denver Post reports that “more than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark; the city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops; water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead…recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools (and museums) will close for good; buses no longer run on evenings and weekends; (and) the city won’t pay for any street paving.”

Closing pools, recreation centers, museums? No street paving? Not enough police and firefighters? No bus service in the evenings and weekends? The police helicopters are even for sale on the Internet. And dozens of necessary police and firefighting positions will not be filled. What kind of life do these government hating Conservatives want to create for Americans?

Criminal justice student, Addy Hansen, is an outspoken opponent of these draconian budget cuts, “We’re the second-largest city, and growing, in Colorado. We’re in trouble. We’re in big trouble.”

Colorado Springs offers us an opportunity to take a good look at the real-life results of the Conservative approach to governing. Street lights and cut backs in police and firefighters, these may seem like small-potatoes to the country. But the ideology that is constraining Colorado Springs, if implemented nationally, would impact our country in many ways that would lead to the decline of American power in the world.

It’s time for Americans to understand that the Conservative mantra of “Small Government and Tax Cuts = Good” is a political slogan that represents an ideology that does not take us as a nation to a healthy and prosperous future.

The ideology that tells us that we should cut taxes because “we as citizens know how to spend our money better than the government” does not play out in the real world. As individual citizens we can’t raise a military, we do that as a national community through our taxes. We join our taxes together to make our country better and more effective in many important ways: police force; firefighters; CIA and FBI; safe food supply; city lights and paved roads; and yes — our safety-net of Social Security/Medicare and Medicaid.

The days of the old west frontier are over folks. It’s time to throw out the old mantras and do some serious long-range thinking about where we want to take our country and how America will fit into the new world economy. We’re already behind much of our competition in the world in 21st century infrastructure, high-speed rail, and in developing new-energy markets.

Taxes for our new future need to be more fair. Tax reform needs to focus on helping to build a stronger middle class, which will support a growing, thriving economy. The tax structure and anti-regulation ideology of the last 30 years of Conservative policies has led our nation to the economic failure we are now experiencing. Even before the financial meltdown 18 months ago the economy was shaky and the recoveries that follow recessions were becoming weaker and weaker.

Tax reform is something that both political parties should be interested in working on together. The old economics have failed — broad based tax cuts for everyone! — and we need a new “smart” approach to building an economy for a new future. We should tax things we want to discourage and stop taxing things we want to encourage. We should tax soft drinks that are unhealthy, and tax gasoline consumption to free America from our dangerous dependence on foreign oil. And, we should cut taxes to encourage research and entrepreneurship.

Without tax reform we won’t have the means to invest in education and infrastructure, healthcare and development of an American new-energy market, we will be a nation in decline, stuck in the past — not ready for the new century.