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This feeling takes the form — symbolically as well as practically — of cutting taxes. Not everyone agrees how government spending should be reduced, though welfare appears at the top of most lists. People simply want tax relief; they will worry about the consequences later. Just about every politician with a prayer of getting elected is offering some kind of tax-cutting program. And it had better be generous. Dick Lamm, Democratic Governor of Colorado, is perplexed by the "excess of expectations. I've lowered the tax rolls, cut spending and brought more federal money back to the state. Yet people are saying, 'What has he done?' " Referendums putting limits on taxing or spending or both will appear on the ballots in 16 states. Voters in Michigan have their choice of three different propositions, including one that forbids the use of property taxes for operating schools without providing any alternatives for raising the money. A property-tax rollback on the ballot in Oregon is the main issue of the gubernatorial campaign. Democratic Governor Bob Straub, who opposes the proposition, is trailing ten points in the polls. His G.O.P. opponent, State Senator Victor Atiyeh, supports the proposal. Says he: "The voices I hear tell me that the people of Oregon want an absolute limit on their tax rates."
If the vox populi is loud and clear on the subject of taxes, it also is sending a vital subliminal message of growing disillusionment with big, wasteful government. "Proposition 13 has been oversimplified and sensationalized," says Pollster Pat Caddell. "The set of frustrations out there is larger than just taxes." Polling indicates that public dissatisfaction with government has risen at a much faster rate than resentment over taxes. A survey in Public Opinion, the periodical published by the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, shows that hostility to income and property taxes has increased by only nine percentage points over the past 20 years, while the proportion of Americans who believe that government is wasteful has jumped from 46% in 1958 to 80% today. A special Yankelovich poll for TIME indicates that while most Americans rather unrealistically believe reduced taxes need not mean reduced services, they think the saving can come by cutting bureaucratic fat (see page 26).
Democrats and Republicans agree that government is under fire as never before. Says Phil Lewis, president-elect of the Florida senate: "The general feeling is that we've got about as much government as the people can stand." Size alone, however, is not the trouble. "There's the equity question," says Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Wisconsin Democrat. "People are willing to bear quite a bit of the burden if it's fairly shared. They get upset when they see that it's not." All too true, agrees David Pryor, Democratic Governor of Arkansas. "It's not the amount of taxes, it's how they're used. Proposition 13 is the taxpayers' way of expressing rage at a system that's laughing at them."