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CACR 6 proposes to amend the state's constitution to require a three-fifths vote in both chambers of the legislature to impose new or increased taxes or license fees.
The New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute details why this would be unsound fiscal policy and how it would threaten the state's long-term fiscal health.
[S]tate budget deficits tend to emerge during economic downturns .... Erecting procedural barriers to tax increases ... means that policymakers would either have to enact deeper spending cuts than would otherwise be the case or would have to rely upon short-sighted accounting gimmicks to bring revenue and expenditures into balance.
A supermajority requirement would cede control over any number of important priorities to a minority of the legislature. ... [T]hey could also delay or halt consideration of other critical legislation ... for concessions on other, potentially unrelated issues.
The ostensible purpose of the proposed resolution is to make the enactment of future tax increases more difficult and, by extension, to keep taxes in New Hampshire low. Yet, the level of taxation in the Granite State is already exceptionally low — and has been for some time -– even in the absence of a supermajority requirement.
In sum, the proposed supermajority requirement ... would unduly constrain the flexibility New Hampshire needs to respond to changing economic circumstances ... and would likely lead to a greater reliance upon temporary solutions to future budgetary shortfalls, more frequent legislative stalemates, and higher borrowing costs.
It's worth noting that seven of the ten states named by the Pew Center on the States as being in fiscal peril impose a supermajority requirement to raise revenue or ratify budgets. Pew identified this constraint as one of the common threads among the states in peril.
CACR 6 is scheduled for a House floor vote on Tuesday, March 15.