A recent Rasmussen poll suggests that American parents understand that when government takes more from them, parents have less to spend caring for their children. Consider these findings regarding taxes, debt and spending:

• 66 percent of Americans believe the country is overtaxed.
• 69 percent of Americans do not want their taxes raised to pay off the national debt.
• 83 percent of Americans believe the budget spending deficit is due to elected officials’ unwillingness to cut spending rather than a reluctance to raise taxes.

In Colorado parents enjoy a fragile line of defense between their pocketbooks and government.  Known as the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), it keeps government from growing faster than the private sector. TABOR allows government to grow by the sum of rate of inflation plus population, and lawmakers must ask Colorado voters for approval to raise taxes.  The beauty of TABOR is that it puts Colorado voters in charge.  They get to decide how much government they want and how much they are willing to pay for it.

Since 1992, TABOR has served Colorado residents well. A 2003 Independence Institute paper A Decade of TABOR: Ten Years After: Analysis of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights concluded:

…in these ten years, taxpayers and businesses made more money, giving their employees more spending, saving and investment power because significantly less was taken from them in taxes.

Also, TABOR has prevented run away spending and kept the state from becoming another California. In an opinion editorial titled “TABOR Saved Colorado,” economist and Independence Institute senior fellow Barry Poulson explained how Colorado and California enjoyed similar tax-and-spend limits but that California went very wrong:

The Golden State’s GANN Amendment, a precursor of TABOR, limited the growth of state revenue and spending to the sum of inflation and population growth. In the late 1980s, the California legislature abandoned the GANN Amendment. The rest is history.

Over the last two decades without GANN, state spending in California increased much more rapidly than personal income. To sustain the higher level of spending, taxes were increased to one of the highest levels in the country. Despite the higher tax burden, the state incurred a structural deficit that required even higher levels of debt. California created one of the worst business tax environments in the country. Business investment, jobs and population left the state for other states with better tax climates. In short, California has experienced retardation in economic growth over the last 20 years.

The bottom line is that tax-and-spend limits force government to live within its means.  Without them, we get fiscal debacles like California or a $12 trillion debt that grows more unmanageable everyday. Without a national TABOR, we will leave our children little more than a legacy of fiscal recklessness and debt burden that will lower their standard of living.

Parents that truly care about their children should demand a TABOR in their states and at the national level.