WE DON'T NEED WESTERN WELFARE
Brookings report paves pork path

Major cities in the Intermountain West, which would include Denver and Colorado Springs, are in for nothing but trouble - unless the federal government intervenes to help them. So says a new study by the Brookings Institute.

The study labeled a five state area - Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico - as the "New American Heartland." It told of cities struggling with too many immigrants, too little water, transportation dilemmas, energy shortages, and... global warming. That's right, any problems the New American Heartland has will only be exacerbated by global warming.

But have no fear, because the Institute - a nonpartisan public policy research organization - suggested the solution. It's the same solution alarmists suggest for global warming: Washington. More Washington intervention in the lives of Westerners and the public policies of Western cities and states would mitigate or avoid this gloom and doom that's predicted in the report.

This is how governments grow, in terms of revenue and control. Problems the little people can't really see, touch or smell are identified somewhere out on the horizon. Stories are told of impending doom which might be avoided or mitigated if we have the sense to fear what the soothsayers say. We can empower them to save us with Washington money. That makes the big people bigger, and the little people smaller. But at least the little people stay safe.

One might expect the Republican governor of a Western state to defend the sovereignty of his turf. Republicans are about states rights, rugged individualism, and problem solving at the local level. Right? No, that was the '80s. Utah Gov. John M. Huntsman Jr. was quick to capitalize on the study as an opportunity to lobby for federal pork. Chairman of the Western Governors Association, Huntsman told the Los Angeles Times that public officials throughout the new heartland must band together and press federal officials to help solve urban problems in the Intermountain West. The study suggests federal policies to help Western cities, just as the federal government helped build Atlanta, Miami and Dallas.

A transportation official in Nevada said the state has historically self-funded transportation projects. Today, gambling revenue is down so federal funds are needed. Gambling revenues are down, and Western cities are struggling, because the nation's economy has slowed. There's a problem with a publicity campaign designed to grease the skids for a federal spending spree that would favor one region of the country. The problem: hundreds of millions of Americans don't live in the Intermountain West. They have their own problems. Some people live on small farms in Arkansas, raising chickens and goats, and they don't care whether big cities at the base of Pikes Peak stagnate or thrive.

Cities in the Intermountain West, the "New Heartland," will thrive only if they seek genuine prosperity and find state and local solutions to problems. We can't whine to the rest of the country that we've grown too fast to survive. We can't ask Washington to save us for failing to diversify economies that depend on risky assumptions, such as "gambling will always pay the bills."

To survive and thrive, Western cities must responsibly manage growth, incubate constructive industry and commerce, and realistically acknowledge limitations to energy and water supplies. Real solutions won't involve Washington much, if at all. The crises and looming crises described in the Brookings report have been known to people in the Intermountain West for decades. They are problems that belong to the Intermountain West, not the rest of the country. Besides, real success doesn't result from a government check.

CALIFORNIA EYES TABOR LAW

Politicians in Colorado Springs and throughout the state contend every day with a "problem" many of them hate. Their problem is the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, which severely restricts their ability to tax and spend and borrow public money without the public's consent. It's cumbersome, unwieldy and downright evil from the perspective of politicians and government bureaucrats who believe that government is the best vehicle for improving society. Coloradans should be thankful that spending limits are the biggest challenge in state and local government. In some other states, government and citizens have the opposite problem: unlimited spending, and no way to stop it. In California this year, where politicians are allowed to pander for support by redistributing gross sums of wealth, the legislature is expecting to spend $15.2 billion more than it will take in. It's a crisis, but politicians can't stop spending. Desperate to control the runaway train, growing numbers of Californians are looking to Colorado's TABOR as the answer. An editorial below, from our sister newspaper The Orange County Register, explains the dilemma in California.

California Republicans, whose virtue thus far has been to refuse to help Democrats pass more taxes, have revived an old idea, but a good one: put a legal limit on state spending.

In tax-happy and spend-even-happier Sacramento, that's a policy easier to advocate than to adopt. But if there is any hope to bring California's escalating budget disaster under control before massively damaging the economy and personal liberties, first the bleeding must be stopped.

Sacramento is hemorrhaging dollars. The latest estimate is that spending will exceed revenue this year by $15.2 billion. The best Democrats can suggest is to slap businesses and individuals with nearly $10 billion more in taxes. Even that wouldn't erase the deficit. Democrats this week arrogantly added $3 billion more in the spending column than was spent last year.

This is a formula for disaster.

To prevent profligate legislators from spending the state into bankruptcy and taxing residents into despondency, some limit must be imposed. Responsible Californians recognize this commonsense principle. Most of them live by it, not spending more than they earn, not paying off credit cards with new credit cards. Of states that have such limits, Colorado may have the strongest, a constitutional provision that in one four-year span resulted in rebating $3.2 billion to taxpayers when revenue exceeded the allowable limit.

Legislative Republicans propose a limit on spending based on a simple formula combining population growth and inflation rate. If population increases 1 percent, and inflation goes up 1 percent, spending legally could increase no more than 2 percent. The mechanics aren't as important as the principle.

We have two things in view: the legitimate limits of government, and a pragmatic limit on current spending. In order to pare back Sacramento's vast overreaching of the first, we need to establish the second.

Rather than strain for creative new ways to drain money out of the private sector, and rather than expand government deeper and broader into even more areas in which it has no legitimate business, the Legislature should be at least as responsible as most Californians, and set a limit.

The problem is that having learned to rob Peter to reward Paul, most legislators see themselves not as guardians of the public's individual liberties (or pocketbooks), but instead as dispensers of benefits at someone else's expense. That is not their legitimate role. Their role is to protect people from just such abuse and corruption.