Joe Mathews–you can’t possibly believe that without the two-thirds vote requirement to raise taxes, California taxpayers would not be buried under even more taxes than they already are. Just because the state is in difficult shape living under a two-thirds vote requirement doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be in worse shape without it.
Yesterday, Mathews took on my column of last week in which I defended the two-thirds vote against coming challenges. My point was to focus the two-thirds vote argument on raising taxes.
A two-thirds vote for the budget would allow the majority party to set priorities. If this debate were simply about the budget my concern would not be as high. But we all know that the goal to create more programs and grow government can’t simply be accomplished by budget votes. The power to tax is essential to the goal setting and that’s what this debate comes down to.
To prove the point, we had a two-thirds vote to pass the budget without much rancor for nearly fifty years. A couple of things changed that. One was the added requirement for a two-thirds vote to raise taxes. The other was the increased influence on legislators by special interests advocating spending.
These interests demand more tax money and they pressure the legislators. The two-thirds acts as a restraint.
Even if your theory is correct, Joe, that an unleashed Democratic majority would run up such a high spending and tax score that the voters would kick them out of office, how long before that would happen? What damage to the economy would take place?
While trying to secure the needed two-thirds may have some down side in creating pork spending in some legislative districts, it can also put positive reforms into play. Dan Weintraub writes that the two-thirds vote is the only reason a needed reform such as a spending limit would be considered by the majority Democrats.
The two-thirds vote protects us from the tyranny of the majority that Alexis de Tocqueville warned us about, particularly, as I argued in my first piece, in the taking of property through taxation.