Four Republican Gubernatorial Clowns + One Libertarian

Via email from Americans for Prosperity:

RALEIGH – With tax bills on the minds of millions of North Carolina taxpayers, five of North Carolina’s gubernatorial candidates have signed a pledge to support spending restraint, the grassroots free-market group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) announced today. Candidates Bill Graham, Pat McCrory, Michael Munger, Bob Orr, and Fred Smith have pledged to support a constitutional limit on state spending known as the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR).

TABOR limits the growth of revenue and spending to the sum of inflation and population growth. Surpluses are put into a Budget Stabilization Fund, an Emergency Fund and then rebated to taxpayers through broad-based tax cuts and rebates.

I don't expect anything resembling enlightenment from McCrory, Smith or Graham, but Orr and Munger are smarter than this. Which means I have take back the nice things I've said about those two. Because by jumping on the AFP pandering bandwagon, they demonstrate a level of political expediency that should disqualify anyone from being elected to anything.

Constitutional limits on spending are stupid and short-sighted. They tie the hands of policy-makers who might confront genuine and absolutely unforeseeable emergencies, and they make investment spending (of the kind companies do every day) literally impossible. The result? An erosion of competence, excellence, service and advantages for citizens.

Let's say the Atlantic Ocean rises by five or six feet over the next 30 years. We'd be looking at the need to relocate half a million people and mitigate untold environmental damage as seawater drowns our network of barrier islands, our ports, the City of New Bern, Wilmington, Kinston, Elizabeth City and more. With TABOR in place, the government would be unable to respond to this crisis of colossal proportions. Or what about a flu pandemic? Imagine millions of people needing to be quarantined, treated, evacuated, hospitalized and buried. With TABOR in place, our government would stand idly by instead of acting. Or what about a court case that forces the state to pay restitution to native Americans and African Americans? Where would that money come from? With TABOR, the General Assembly would be hamstrung.

I can come up with as many examples as you want to illustrate the stupidity of a constitutionally mandated limit on public spending. It's the same kind of stupidity that comes with Liddy Dole's proposal to fix defense spending at 4% of the budget.

The truth is, Republicans (and Libertarians) don't give a damn about good governance. They care only for getting elected and destroying the integrity and competence of the government they're supposed to lead.

Pathetic.