To the TABOR Committee, Letters to the Editor and Rep. Bob Rankin:

Rep. Rankin’s recent column in the Post Independent was unwisely sent to TC members. Rankin’s statements show he accepts and repeats the dishonest RINO-leftist jargon on government budgets.

There is no reduction in total state revenue, only an increase.

You can’t have a TABOR refund until revenue grows by more than the allowed increase for population and inflation.

No department that gets more money than the year before experiences a “cut.”

The JBC has violated TABOR, not only by continuance of Referendum C rules (a statute cannot override the constitutional formula) but by violating the 2005 promise to voters that “C” was “only” a “five-year time out” and TABOR would then be reinstated. The formula was altered by statute, and that swindle still costs taxpayers close to $1 billion yearly in confiscated refunds.

The JBC also violates TABOR yearly by embezzling the state’s required emergency reserve in TABOR subsection (5) and replacing the hundreds of millions in cash with a piece of paper that lists state real property. In an emergency, like another Limon tornado, a flood or other disaster, how does the state “spend” a tunnel or a bridge?

There is no “shortfall.” There are no “cuts,” but only a distribution of revenue growth.

Saying there is no revenue for “expansion of existing programs” is also false. When revenue grows and is spent, that is a program expansion.

If Rankin believes adding the percentages of inflation and population estimates (like 1 percent plus 2 percent) to a portion (“fiscal year spending”) of total state spending is “complex,” he should not be on the JBC. He can’t handle that simplest act of arithmetic.

Medicaid is optional. It is not a federal mandate, but a joint spending program. Legislators need to get their snouts out of the trough of “free” federal funds. The national economy will soon collapse and we need to wean ourselves of dependency on federal funds. We can legally give a one-year notice of withdrawal from this fraud-filled program.

Rankin advocates further evasion of TABOR by cutting the base to which fiscal year spending growth limits apply by $500-plus million. That would cheat citizens even more by shrinking TABOR’s coverage and reducing tax refunds. In other words, he backs Democrat Gov. Hickenlooper’s leftist agenda.

This is the smoking gun showing he is a RINO. Saying that rapid growth of a program should trigger its exclusion from TABOR limits defeats the whole purpose of TABOR. Socialized medicine is a big part of the the problem, and the solution is not to let the state grow unchecked.

He says voters should do this dirty deed “under the provisions of TABOR.” TABOR has no clause for its own destruction. The Hospital Provider Fee is not an enterprise, which is a “government-owned business.” It is another mechanism for massive welfare handouts. To call redistribution of the wealth a government business is so outrageous as to make Karl Marx blush. No, Mr. Rankin, Karl is not Groucho’s brother.

Rankin ends by praising BB, a TABOR override voters approved this month. It was on the ballot because the state deceived voters in 2013 by lowballing state revenue growth by $270 million. The ballot title of Proposition BB did not even tell voters how much the refund was. Rankin wants the state to be rewarded for that false figure it presented to justify the pot tax.

I suggest the TC send this article out to your list to explain how you are being had. You should not showcase without comment the agenda of a Republican impostor. This rebuttal should be printed in the paper that printed his justification for being a big spender.

Douglas Bruce of Colorado Springs is author of the Colorado Taxpayers Bill of Rights, known as TABOR.