If I may quote from myself at Right Wisconsin …

Most states have some form of spending or tax controls in their state constitutions. Wisconsin does not. The controls we have, such as they are, are in state law, passed by legislatures and signed by governors who want them, and overturned by legislatures and governors who do not. (You may recall that Doyle got rid of the Qualified Economic Offer law to allow teacher contract increases to go as high as the sky.)

The Tax Foundation has a Taxpayer Bill of Rights calculator on its website that allows users to compare actual spending against spending that would have been limited by such common limits as population growth, the Consumer Price Index increase and personal income growth. Going back to the late 1970s — when Wisconsin’s per capita personal income growth exceeded the national average, the last time that happened — had population growth and CPI limits been the law of this land, state and local government today would be spending half what it does now in this state.

The absence of permanent — that is, constitutional — limits on government spending is what has given Wisconsin the fifth highest state and local taxes in the U.S. Wisconsin has had Republican and Democratic governors, and Republican, Democratic and split-party control of the Legislature since the late 1970s, but one thing in common with all of them — spending that spirals upward, and therefore taxes that spiral upward, even when no one votes to increase taxes. …

No Democrat and not enough Republicans support taxpayer rights because they don’t want to lose political power. Voters cannot trust Walker or the Legislature’s Republicans to control spending, because voters cannot trust politicians of either or no party to control spending.

Voting the right way is necessary but insufficient. Politicians must be prevented from spending more taxpayer money than the taxpayer approves.