See where government can lose weight and find out how you can help
make it happen. (Updates on government action will be highlighted
in red throughout the site.)
Celebrate with us as government sheds pounds! These inspiring stories
show how some state officials have successfully implemented principles
of true accountability. Their programs and departments never looked
so good!
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encourage them to implement our diet
tips for government.
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At a March 23, 2005, House Appropriations hearing on a bill to gut the voter-approved I-601 spending limit, Rep. Jim McIntire (D) asked a supporter of I-601’s two-third supermajority requirement for the legislature to raise taxes the following question:
"Can you name a time when we [legislators] have actually not just set it [supermajority requirement] aside by majority vote? I mean, this is in many respects a procedural motion that has no bearing. It’s a statutory constraint that cannot constrain any legislature that chooses as a majority to set it aside . . . have we ever used a supermajority [to raise taxes]?"