Bill Hobbs is on overtime this week. Earlier, he caught Harold Ford in a out-and-out lie in an on-air debate piece with Marsha Blackburn.  Yesterday, he noted blatant misrepresentations regarding the Taxpayer Bill of Rights from the benignly named Center for Policy Alternatives. The report these untruths are found in is rather malignantly named – Progressive Platform for the States 2006. Let’s cut through the newspeak though. Properly entitled, it’s the Socialist Platform for the States 2006. Using a word rooted with “progress” implies, well, progress. I take offense.

Here’s the most blatant lie from the report

TABOR increases unemployment.
Economic studies show that any private sector jobs that may be created by cutting taxes will be more than offset by the loss of public sector jobs caused by corresponding reductions in spending. That theory became reality in Colorado, which suffered a net loss of 68,000 jobs between 2001 and 2004. Only three states lost a larger share of employment during the 2001 recession.

I think my edit and insertion of “socialist” is self authenticating at this point. Any organization that equates public sector jobs with private sector employment is no friend of small government, and no advocate for freedom. Hobbs aptly explains

Colorado’s job losses during the 2001 recession were inflated by large losses in the tech and telecom sectors, which were big in Colorado. That had nothing to do with the TABOR provision and everything to do with the bursting of the tech bubble.

Additionally, it is simply ludicrous to equate public sector jobs with private sector jobs when the discussion is about taxes. Public sector jobs are funded largely by taxes paid by people who work in the private sector. It has to be that way. A job lost in the private sector results in the government having less money as tax revenue declines. A job lost in the public sector results in the government having more money as it its payroll shrinks.

Economic reality is optional when abdicating truth in a cynical pursuit of ideological advocacy. TABOR must frighten them. Colorado did back off the restrictions, but not because the concept failed (actually Hobbs has a lot on Colorado’s TABOR experience on his site).

In short, people who write what the Center for Policy Alternatives did and present it as fact are dangerous. The nation was not founded on the belief that our collective success depended on the size and growth of our government.  In fact, it’s the contrary that is true. We conservatives need to take back the reigns. If we don’t, a lot of the successes we’ve seen since Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 will evaporate like the morning mist. It takes 10x the energy to shrink government than it does to grow it. If we’re not diligent, one bad election cycle will set us back another 25 years.