This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, October 11th,

2003. I'm Caleb Brown. States face budget constraints that the feds don't,

but some states have gone further than others to actively

constrain spending and yet there's still more states can do. Vance again

former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget, and current chief economist at Louisiana's

Pelican Institute spoke with me in Chicago in August.

State governments have widely varied ways of attempting to constrain spending.

Most constrained spending by virtue of the fact that the bond market

is not going to allow them to go unrestrained with their spending.

They have to balance budgets in a sense.

But other states have gone further.

I'm thinking of Colorado, North Carolina, recently, Kentucky, and a few other

states have built-in ways to constrain revenue let's separate those two out though.

To what extent have states made active choices

to restrain spending and what have they done in order to do that.

It's important to make sure that we constrain spending as much as possible as government spending is the ultimate burden of government and

make sure that we need to restrict it. But when you look at this they also have

constitutional amendments that have a balanced budget amendment so they've got to

make sure that their spending equals their revenue

uh... forty nine states have that but other states as you mentioned

Colorado's taxpayer bill of rights was an important precedent to set up the

stage for uh... spending limits based on population growth plus inflation to say,

...