August 31, 2010 07:23 PM UTC

Hick: More Tax Cuts, No New Money for Education

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• by: davidsirota

(This is not so much a question about the election, where all conventional wisdom suggests this won’t hurt–as what comes after – promoted by Colorado Pols)

How can you tell the virulent anti-tax fervor still dominates American politics in genuinely a bipartisan way? Look no further than Colorado. In a state facing a historic budget deficit – a state that now ranks 40th out of 50 in its funding of education – we get this from the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer:

Hick: No new money for education

Education funding will remain tight, Democrat John Hickenlooper warned today as he unveiled his plans for education if he’s elected governor.

“We’re not going to throw money at the problem,” the Denver mayor said during a news conference at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton with running mate Joe Garcia, president of Colorado State University-Pueblo. “There is no appetite” among the public for new taxes, Hickenlooper said.

Remember, Hickenlooper is making this no-new-education-money stand at the same time he is now campaigning on an explicit promise to cut taxes (see this video starting at 1:19). Also remember that he effectively faces token opposition in his run for governor, thanks to the Republican vote being split by GOP nominee Dan Maes and Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo. So he is taking this stand in a political vacuum – that is, he’s saying this on his own with no real external political/electoral pressure.

Knowing that – knowing that this is an unvarnished, pure expression of principle rather than forced political calculation – only reiterates the fact that the anti-tax, anti-government ideology is alive and well in both parties, especially when you consider the abrasive “throwing money at the problem” language being employed.  

It would be one thing to use that kind of rhetoric in a state that was at the top of the heap in education funding. At least then a politician could claim that a state had already been spending lots on education. But to use that kind of language in a state near the bottom suggests – well, it shows that this is a matter of deep conviction at least for Hickenlooper, if not for the larger national conservative faction that still calls the shots in the Democratic Party.

As I’ve said before, it’s particularly sad to watch Hickenlooper engage in this kind of campaign, considering his previous admirable record of leveling with voters on tax and budget questions. This is a guy who deserves a lot of credit for going to Denver voters and requesting some pragmatic tax increases to preserve some basic public priorities. However, now that he’s running statewide and is surrounded by national Democratic Party hacks, he’s turned into a rather typical Republican-parroting conservadem on economics.

That might not be such a big idea if this was some kind of anomaly. But, as anyone who follows politics knows, Hickenlooper’s trajectory on economics is far more the rule than the exception in modern Democratic politics. And in representing that rule, Hickenlooper proves that the anti-tax, anti-government zeitgeist is still alive and well – even at a time of a historic budget crisis.