TABOR & "Starve the Beast"

The most innovative thinking on the "starve the beast" tax policy has come from the communist pinko halfway house known as the Cato Institute, which has basically said that the theory does not work. Now the Reason Foundation is adding a new log to the fire by equating starving the beast with TABOR:

I see TABOR as akin to the "starve the beast" solution to government spending. This belief is that tax cuts mandated before spending cuts will necessitate the later due to the enormous budget shortfalls. As this paper has shown, tax cuts that come before spending cuts often leads to a longer term INCREASE in government spending because voters react to the budget deficits not with supporting further government spending cuts but with voting for pro-tax and higher spending politicians.

TABOR proponents have the causal effect of government budgets backwards, the problem is with spending and not taxation. A better solution is to have policies more thoughtfully and strategically plan spending reductions, such as through privatization or reducing wasteful expenditures.

(emphasis added)

The Left has never accepted what I like to think of as the Iron Triangle of Voodoo Economics -- the Laffer Curve, "starve the beast," and TABOR -- and now it appears that the the Libertarian wing of conservatism is actually leading the charge against it with an arsenal of fresh ideas. Hopefully, this will put an end to the prospects of Wisconsin adopting TABOR in the future.