LONG LIVE THE PLEDGE!
Lawmakers who sign the Taxpayer Protection Pledge can end unrestrained government growth
BY CHUCK MUTH

Chuck Muth is president and CEO of Citizen Out reach. He is a professional political consultant. Find more about him and read more of his work at www.chuckmuth.com. Other stories by Chuck Muth

Democrats hate it. Government bureaucrats fear it. Many in the media despise it. Even some Republicans run from it like scalded dogs. �It� is the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform has been championing for more than 20 years now. 

The pledge is really quite simple, and one can readily understand why so many big-government types loathe it. Elected officials who take the Pledge simply promise the voters that they won�t support tax increases. Period. 

Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons signed the Pledge last year. But not only did he take the Pledge, he�s sticking to it. And that�s driving the big-government crowd bonkers. 

As our legislative sausage-grinders go about their business in Carson City this year, everybody and their uncle has his hand out demanding mo� money, mo� money, mo� money! This has tax-hike proponents coming out of the woodwork. But Gibbons just keeps saying no. Which is slowly but surely changing this discussion in a rather dramatic way. 

Knowing the governor will veto any legislatively-passed tax hike, some legislators suggested trying to go around him by putting a tax hike for road construction on the ballot in 2008. But Gibbons shot that one down, too, saying any ballot initiative to raise taxes has to come via the signature-gathering citizen petition process, not the Legislature. 

So now, legislators are being forced to think the unthinkable: Controlling spending. 

Instead of asking for the moon (and getting it), the big-government crowd is being forced to live within its means. They are being forced to consider setting spending priorities. They are being forced to look for waste, fraud and abuse to cut. They are being forced to look for duplications in services to cut. They are being forced to look at privatizing some government services. They�re even being forced to start questioning whether some of the things the government is doing are things the government should be doing in the first place. 

For example, maybe the law requiring contractors to pay inflated union wages on school construction and road-building projects should be scrapped. Or maybe we should deport all illegal aliens currently residing at taxpayer expense in our state prisons. Or maybe the failed class-size reduction program should be deep-sixed. Or maybe targeted school vouchers should be extended to parents in over-crowded public schools rather than building expensive new buildings. Or maybe Nevadans should be allowed to buy health insurance on the open market from outside the state. Or maybe � 

You get the picture. None of these, or any other tax-hike alternative ideas, have ever been seriously considered while state legislators had a blank check courtesy of the taxpayers. But now, thanks to the Taxpayer Protection Pledge and Gov. Gibbons� unwavering commitment to it, the era of unchecked, unrestrained government growth just may be coming to an end. 

So the �problem� isn�t that Republicans such as Gibbons, state Sen. Bob Beers and Assemblyman Ty Cobb have signed the �no new taxes� pledge; the problem is that so many Democrats and �moderate� Republicans haven�t. 

Long live the Pledge!