Maine families are struggling financially. We already have one of the highest tax burdens in the country. Gasoline and heating oil prices are out of sight. Costs of milk, bread and many other basic necessities are rising so fast, it is hard to keep up.

This is the worst time for state government to force people to pay more for anything.

One could wonder, then, why the Bangor Daily News and its columnist Dr. Erik Steele would support $75 million in new taxes on health insurance claims and beverages. Even more troubling, both felt it was perfectly OK that the Legislature and governor passed these new taxes without any public hearing late at night in the final days of the legislative session.

As much as the BDN and others try to justify these taxes, the simple fact is Maine residents have had enough.

As a reputable physician, Dr. Steele knows that just about everyone can lift a 5-pound weight. But if you keep adding more and more weight, you eventually reach a point when the burden is simply too heavy for most people to shoulder.

The same is true for Maine and taxes. Bad as they are, these new taxes aren’t the problem by themselves. The problem is that our elected officials have been adding taxes upon taxes, year after year – with each increase justified by well-meaning legislators and well-organized special interest groups.

Well, the day of reckoning has arrived. We have reached the breaking point, and residents and small businesses simply can’t handle any more taxes.

Regrettably, both the BDN and Dr. Steele have parroted the big scare tactic that repeal of these taxes will deprive people of their health insurance. That is untrue and irresponsible. If the people’s veto is successful, the existing funding structure for the Dirigo Health Program remains in place. Even the leaders of the program have acknowledged that if these new taxes are repealed, the program will continue.

The fundamental issue is that funding for Dirigo should be debated in the open, and the program should be evaluated on its merits alongside every state program competing for our tax dollars. We ought to assess how much Dirigo costs and what taxpayers are getting in return, rather than ramming through new taxes in the middle of the night without public input to keep the program going.

No less of an authority than Tom Dunne, the first executive director of the program, said recently that the Legislature’s late-night passage of new taxes to fund Dirigo “represents the worst in government. There was no real discussion on what Dirigo has delivered, other options, or on Dirigo’s relative worth versus other important programs.”

And let’s not forget, these new taxes affect more than just consumers. They also will raise costs for small businesses at a time when they, too, are struggling. Maine needs every job it can find right now, and since most jobs are provided by small businesses, the last thing we need to do is put more pressure on them through higher taxes.

Finally, I find it ironic that the BDN easily dismisses the undemocratic way in which these taxes were enacted. Even though there is a public hearing on virtually every bill before the Legislature, and even though the paper staunchly defends the public’s “right to know” on most issues, it excuses the failure to have any public input on tens of millions of dollars in new taxes by saying the idea for beverage taxes came from a 2006 commission report.

The truth is the Legislature did not hold a public hearing on these new taxes because it hoped that we wouldn’t notice what it was up to. It knew people would be up in arms about these new taxes.

And now that people have noticed, they are fed up. That’s why thousands and thousands of them are signing their name to petitions to put this issue on the ballot in the fall.

You may rail all you want against our people’s veto campaign to repeal these taxes, but we are giving Maine residents the opportunity to have their say – an opportunity that their government denied them.

Newell Augur is chairman of the Fed Up With Taxes coalition.