What Good is a Spending Cap if it Can Be Overridden?

The Cleveland Plain Dealer tries to paint the proposed tax expenditure limit legislation in a negative light, but as I read this article, I see these "negatives" as positives...

A constitutional amendment whose prime mission is to cap government spending also contains a "supremacy clause" allowing it to prevail over all other sections of the Ohio Constitution, according to a Policy Matters Ohio report out today.

"It's an unusual thing to do, to write a clause that says this provision of the Constitution is going to trump everything - whatever it is," said research analyst Jon Honeck, the report's author. "Whether it's municipal home rule, anything to do with education, it really doesn't matter."

Honeck said the ballot issue, which Secretary of State Ken Blackwell is championing for the November ballot, also contains a "giant disclaimer clause" that would require billing any attempts to revise the provision as an all-out repeal of spending caps.

You see, the Plain Dealer...and more than a few politicans I can think of, on both sides of the aisle...don't want to limit statehouse spending at all. Some, in fact, want to increase spending...

That plan just won't work, my friends...

We need to stop this out of control spending in Columbus and in Washington. The only way to do that is if it is law.

Read the whole piece for all the details...