I sat in disbelief as I watched a bill go down that would have made it illegal for the legislature to pass an unbalanced budget. The bill was actually not a normal bill, it was a referendum. This means that if successful in the house and senate, then it would be up to the voters to decide at the next election if they wanted to approve this new law. And, this bill had lost before and was up for a reconsideration. So, to lose a second time meant it was deep dead. Gone until next year at the earliest.
The reason this bill was being reconsidered was because many people had "said" they voted against it the first time around out of confusion. They said they thought it was TABOR (Taxpayers Bill of Rights), which is arguably one of the most aggressive pieces of fiscally conservative legislation out there these days. In actuality, though, this bill was all of the really obviously good things about TABOR without all of the "out there" super conservative stuff. So, someone made a motion to hear it again. Naturally, everyone expected it to pass the second time now that everyone understood that this was more of a "TABOR-lite" (my own pet term for it).
In other words, this was a very reasonable piece of legislation that the voters should have had a chance to vote on. I was shocked to see that we couldn't find 31 Republicans willing to even give the voters the chance to insist we give them a balanced budget. What is so bad about letting the voters choose to have a balanced budget?! Shocking. Discouraging. Sad. Borderline disgusting, to be honest.
