Ted Harvey

Proven Conservative Leadership

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Taxes and Spending
Senator Harvey believes that the economy functions best when tax and regulatory burdens on businesses and individuals are low. He has never voted for a tax increase and is opposed to increasing the size of government.

2009 Session Wrapup: Fiscal Irresponsibility

If the 2009 Colorado legislative session will be remembered for anything, it will be for appalling fiscal mismanagement. The Democrats sidestepped TABOR’s requirement that all tax increases be approved by voters by passing approving about a billion dollars in fee increases and new taxes. Colorado families, students, and businesses will feel the pain of these fee and tax increases when they can least afford it.

The Democrats took things a step further by repealing a part of TABOR that limits most government growth to 6% per year. This long-standing cap has served both to keep spending in check and require that transportation receives funding on a regular basis. Now that the 6% cap has been repealed, money originally set aside for transportation can be freely spent on assorted pet projects, causing our state’s infrastructure to further deteriorate.

The legislature faced a budget shortfall of approximately $850 million this year. The Democrats shot down more than 22 Republican proposals to cut spending and instead drained trust funds and resorted to one-time accounting tricks to avoid making tough choices. In spite of the Democrats’ whining about taxes being too low, they actually managed to increase state spending by 4%.

These one-time accounting gimmicks accomplished nothing. The Democrats have balanced the budget on the bet that the economy will bounce back within months. Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry described the impending fiscal train wreck as a “ticking time bomb.” Fortunately, this reckless stewardship of taxpayer money has not gone unnoticed.

This year’s Tax Day Tea Party drew an estimated 7,000 conservative activists on a work day who made their point heard: taxes are too high, spending is out of control, and the government is too big. I am very encouraged by level of public engagement on this issue – lawmakers will not be able to continue this sort of reckless taxing and spending for long.

 

Harvey Sponsors Resolution Opposing Reckless Spending in Federal Stimulus Package

Senator Harvey Sponsors Resolution Urging Fiscal Responsibility for U.S. Congress, President Obama

Partial text of resolution: (read the full text here)

Sixty-seventh General Assembly
STATE OF COLORADO 

INTRODUCED: SJM09-001 

SENATE SPONSORSHIP: Harvey, Brophy, Kester, Cadman, Mitchell, King K., Scheffel, Spence 
HOUSE SPONSORSHIP: McNulty  


Be It Resolved by the Senate of the Sixty-seventh General Assembly of the State of Colorado, the House of Representatives concurring herein: 

(1) It is the sense of the General Assembly that passage of H.R. 1 will grow the size of government far more than it will stimulate the economy. 

(2) It is the sense of the General Assembly that the best way for the federal government to spur private-sector job creation is to reduce the tax and regulatory burdens on small businesses, rather than redistributing billions of dollars from the private sector to government programs. 

(3) It is the sense of the General Assembly that the inclusion of provisions unrelated to infrastructure spending, such as the Davis-Bacon wage mandate, in H.R. 1 will impose unnecessary costs on taxpayers. 

 

Colorado's Fiscal Restraint vs. California's Failed Socialist Experiment

Speech by Senator Ted Harvey in Opposition to SB 228: Repeal the 6% Spending Growth Cap

The current and steep recession across the country has not spared Colorado or its budget.  With only five months remaining in this fiscal year, the legislature is racing to cut $600 million from our current year’s budget.   This is a lot of money, but it pales in comparison to the massive $42 BILLION hole that the state of California is trying to manage.  

The Golden State legislature has been under lock down as the Democrat majority tried to twist arms and find one more vote to increase government revenue by $14.2 billion by taxing  income, sales, gasoline and cars.  Six years ago Mr. Schwarzenegger defeated Governor Gray Davis by calling him "Car-taxula."  Ironically, Governor Arnold’s current budget is asking to double the same tax.

The difference between Colorado’s budget troubles and California’s budget meltdown is not random – Colorado is doing comparatively well because its people have pursued fiscal restraint, while Californians have approved reckless spending packages year after year. US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said that state legislatures are laboratories of democracy in America.  The impact of the current economic crises on national and state budgets could not provide a more vivid opportunity to prove this theory.   While Colorado has chosen fiscally prudent constitutional constraints on growth and spending—through the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) and a 6% growth cap on state spending—California has chosen the path of a socialist experiment in their state.  Like the failed communist experiments of the 20th Century, the irresponsible Californian experiment is soon to find its appropriate place atop what President Ronald Reagan called “the ash heap of history."  

 

Colorado's Fiscal Restraint vs. California's Failed Socialist Experiment

Speech by Senator Ted Harvey in Opposition to SB 228: Repeal the 6% Spending Growth Cap

The current and steep recession across the country has not spared Colorado or its budget.  With only five months remaining in this fiscal year, the legislature is racing to cut $600 million from our current year’s budget.   This is a lot of money, but it pales in comparison to the massive $42 BILLION hole that the state of California is trying to manage.  

The Golden State legislature has been under lock down as the Democrat majority tried to twist arms and find one more vote to increase government revenue by $14.2 billion by taxing  income, sales, gasoline and cars.  Six years ago Mr. Schwarzenegger defeated Governor Gray Davis by calling him "Car-taxula."  Ironically, Governor Arnold’s current budget is asking to double the same tax.

The difference between Colorado’s budget troubles and California’s budget meltdown is not random – Colorado is doing comparatively well because its people have pursued fiscal restraint, while Californians have approved reckless spending packages year after year. US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said that state legislatures are laboratories of democracy in America.  The impact of the current economic crises on national and state budgets could not provide a more vivid opportunity to prove this theory.   While Colorado has chosen fiscally prudent constitutional constraints on growth and spending—through the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) and a 6% growth cap on state spending—California has chosen the path of a socialist experiment in their state.  Like the failed communist experiments of the 20th Century, the irresponsible Californian experiment is soon to find its appropriate place atop what President Ronald Reagan called “the ash heap of history."  

 

Senate Dems vote to erase state's 30-year old spending caps

March 17, 2009
Colorado Senate News

Ruling Senate Democrats put their official stamp today on a measure that blows away the decades-old spending cap on the state's operating budget and siphons off billions of dollars in future highway funding that Republicans say will now be used to grow government.

The controversial proposal's sponsor, Democrat Sen. John Morse of Colorado Springs, came out swinging prior to the Senate's final vote on Senate Bill 228, accusing the GOP of insensitivity to the need for social programs that he hopes to fund through the "flexibility" lawmakers would be granted under the bill.

The charge drew a furious response from Republicans, who denounced it as an attempt to play politics and divert public and business-community attention from the fact that the bill will cost the state's overburdened transportation system dearly--and is fiscally reckless in general.

The GOP's Sen. Bill Cadman, of Colorado Springs, drove the point home, contending it was Democrats who have failed to set spending priorities that match the expectations of most taxpayers.

"Transportation gets shortchanged going back 10, 20, 30 years," Cadman said.

Alongside Senate Republicans' full-frontal assault on the bill, business and community leaders from across the state have been issuing statements denouncing the measure--principally because of the hundreds of millions of dollars a year in would cost the state's highway system beginning in just a few years.

Highlands Ranch Republican Sen. Ted Harvey read the litany of business and civic groups that have come out against the measure, punctuating the list with the observation, "Is there anybody in the state who is not against Senate Bill 228?"