Veteran Denver Post (and former Rocky Mountain News) columnist Vincent Carroll writes here about the overweaning ambition of those who support the anti-TABOR lawsuit. That lawsuit claims that because Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) imposes fiscal limits on the power of the state legislature—that is, restricts lawmakers’ power to tax, spend, and borrow— it violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee to each state of a “republican form of government.”

Mr. Carroll thereby indirectly supports a point made earlier in this blog, and supported by an II study: Because almost every state restricts the legislature’s financial powers in some way, the theory of the anti-TABOR lawsuit would threaten clauses in the constitutions of almost every state.

Mr. Carroll doesn’t say so, but if you were to take the batty anti-TABOR theory seriously, the U.S. Constitution isn’t “republican,” either, because it also limits the fiscal powers of the legislature. Specifically, the Constitution requires that Congress apportion most direct taxes, that it pass only uniform indirect taxes, and that Congress impose taxes only for “general Welfare” purposes. The Constitution also bans Congress from taxing exports.

So by the reasoning of the anti-TABOR folks, the Constitution itself did not set up a “republican form of government!”

Kudos to Vincent Carroll for a fine analysis.