Seriously?

First off, those retirees weren't paying taxes on what they were receiving from their pensions (at least until the legislature saw differently last week).

But they were paying property taxes, sales taxes and a laundry list of gov't fees. So to even imply that those people would "keep getting services without paying for them" is disingenuous at best.

You want to push for broad based reform?

Great!

Here's how I would do it: Take what taxes the state collected last month and use that as a benchmark for where to begin (i.e income, sales, property, etc.)

Direct Messrs. Nixon & Dillon to go through the state budget and cite the constitutional authorization for each line item.

Tally up every item in the budget that does not have constitution authority and defund every one of those items.

I shouldn't have to be the first to tell you that if there is no authorization, the state should not be spending that money in the first place.

Add up the savings and divide that among taxes currently collected.

There's your broad-based tax reduction.