Opinion: DOGE of its day, TABOR traces its roots to Colorado’s MAGA movement

glas Bruce speaks about the Colorado Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights during a press conference in 1990 (Screenshot from C-SPAN).

Douglas Bruce, author of the Colorado Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, on his website offers a prayer for President Donald Trump.

“O LORD, We Thy People unite in prayer for your servant, Donald John Trump, still battling eternal threats of Evil and Hate,” it says.

This bit of unseemly genuflection to one of the most un-Christ-like figures in American society hints at a truth about TABOR that, while long obscure, is now obvious: The state constitutional amendment and the MAGA movement come from the same place. Same political wellspring. Same scorched-earth style of policymaking. Same bad faith populist appeal to “freedom.” Same frothing contempt for government.

And, like MAGA, TABOR will continue to do damage until it’s extinguished.

TABOR puts a cap on the annual revenue the state can collect and spend, and it mandates that the state refund to taxpayers any money it collects above the cap. It also says government entities must get voter approval to raise taxes. The insidious nature of the measure is that it can sound reasonable on the surface.

But the problems are legion.

TABOR undermines the very structure of state government by stripping elected representatives of one of their core responsibilities, sound management of the state budget. It turns much of that responsibility over to voters with the implied expectation that the electorate, according to some direct-democracy fantasy, should mark their ballots only after having pored over a 250-page budget, studied quarterly economic forecasts, weighed hundreds of competing state services, consulted public and private stakeholders, heard testimony from business groups and industry leaders, and accounted for local government interests. 

That’s what representatives are elected to do. 

Though TABOR purports to increase the cap at a regular population-growth-plus-inflation rate, the formula prevents revenue from keeping up with the economy. It forces the state to fall behind the cost of maintaining services and new investments. The point is to force government to wither.

The formula’s failure to keep up with state needs shows. Colorado has long ranked among the worst states for education funding, and it’s often unable to adequately support public health programs. TABOR has compromised the state’s business climate, and in moments of economic crisis it hobbles decision makers — the very people Colorado voters put in office to handle those crises. 

And TABOR, which no other state has adopted, might be unconstitutional. That’s the premise of a proposed state House joint resolution, which the House Finance Committee advanced this week. Resolution backers want a court to decide whether TABOR violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee that states have “a republican form of government,” in which the essential power to decide matters of “revenue and expenditure” remains with the legislature. 

Gutted government. Disdain for public services. TABOR accomplishes in the state much of what the Trump administration has set out to do at the federal level. But its kinship with the MAGA program runs much deeper than that.

Bruce successfully pitched TABOR to voters in 1992, during a period that swirled with whispers of what later became the voice of MAGA. This is when MAGA elder Newt Gingrich, then the Republican whip in the U.S. House and an originator of the Republican Party’s vicious style of attacks and insults, sent to GOP candidates a pamphlet that instructed them to use certain words to describe their opponents. “Disgrace,” “pathetic,” “sick,” “traitors” — words that Americans are now so accustomed to hearing from Trump, who in 1992 saw the Trump Plaza Hotel descend into bankruptcy.

Bruce “rebranded the idea of starving a government as a fight for freedom,” as NPR host Robert Smith once put it. It’s striking how closely that posture matches rhetoric around the government destruction project underway in Washington. 

“Smaller government is the only way to restore your freedom,” proclaimed Elon Musk in a social media post in February. Musk leads Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is tearing through federal agencies to impose funding reductions.

Bruce himself behaved in a Trumpian manner that threw rivals off balance. He once provoked then-Secretary of State Natalie Meyer to an outburst when he said in her presence, in front of news cameras, that she had “a mental deficiency.” Then-Gov. Roy Romer likened Bruce to a “terrorist” trying to destroy the state government.

In 2012, Bruce was prosecuted for tax evasion. Like Trump, he is a convicted felon. 

Bruce, however, was hardly the only TABOR campaigner whose true colors more recently were revealed to be shades of Trumpist orange. One of Bruce’s earliest prominent backers was John Andrews, a former state Senate president who is among the most influential Colorado conservatives of the past several decades. In 2016, Andrews emerged as one of the first top GOP figures in the state to throw support to Trump.

In his book about TABOR, former Colorado state Rep. Brad Young notes that the measure’s leading champion nationally was Barry Poulson, emeritus professor of economics at the University of Colorado. By 2020, Poulson had become a public supporter of Trump’s reelection campaign.

While TABOR remains the law in Colorado, the state’s political environment has changed dramatically since the amendment’s passage. Republicans dominated state politics into the early years of the new millennium, but then a shift left took hold, and today Democrats have settled into trifecta control of the Capitol.

The TABOR campaigners found a natural home in the Trump cult while the rest of the state adopted a fiercely anti-MAGA agenda. That opposition implicates TABOR itself.

Editor’s note: This opinion column first appeared on Colorado Newsline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com.