In 1992, Colorado passed a constitutional amendment instituting a "taxpayer's bill of rights" (TABOR) in order to make it more difficult for the state to increase taxes during the good times and spend during the bad times. Although Colorado's TABOR law has resulted in a structural cycle of drastic disinvestment in public services, many other states have either considered enacting tax and expenditure limiting legislation (TELS) in 2005 or will likely consider it in 2006. Although proven to be harmful to state budgets and citizens in Colorado, TABOR laws are easily marketable to the public because they force legislators to stay within a predefined budget and also appear to fight the public perception of out-of-control "government waste." In reality, TABOR laws limit a state's flexibility to alter spending levels from one year to the next. This effectively prevents states from being able to allocate money to different programs to reflect new or differing priorities. Colorado's TABOR amendment forced that state to significantly cut education and other programs and to refund $3.25 billion in tax collections during the decade 1992-2002. As a result, today Colorado is ranked 48th in per-student funding, 47th in K-12 education relative to state income, and 50th in funding for the arts. In 2005, a number of states introduced TELS amendments, which would restrict state revenue, appropriations, or both. Fortunately, a combination of grassroots pressure and other more important legislative priorities has so far prevented any state from actually altering their constitution. However, TABOR laws may prove to be a greater threat in the 2006 election year. Politicians may be more likely to introduce TABOR to voters along with other state initiatives of public interest and importance. Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Wisconsin have been identified as states closest to passing TELS. Ohio, where the General Assembly is considering a TABOR-type amendment that would specifically restrict spending, is the closest state to altering the constitution. This could happen as early as November 2005. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report documenting how Ohio's state spending would have been impacted had this law been adopted in 1994, in order to show how the law would have affected the state over a number of years. Had this expenditure-limiting law been in place for the past eleven years, a total of $19 billion would have been cut from state programs and services such as education, Medicaid, public safety, transportation and the environment. Fiscal year 2005 expenditures alone would have been approximately $3 billion (17 percent) less than they actually were this year. Not only would Ohioans, and mostly poor Ohioans, receive less in services because of decreases in state spending, but those reductions would be compounded by loss of federal matching funds. For example, Ohio receives $1.43 from the federal government for every $1 it spends on Medicaid. A TABOR amendment would drastically reduce state spending on Medicaid by hundreds of millions of dollars every year. States should not be fooled into believing laws setting tax and spending limits will help limit government waste. Instead those laws will methodically cut spending and decrease revenues on important social programs regardless of need. Grassroots pressure against such laws is growing and must be maintained through the 2006 elections.