Goldwater Institute

Too often “profit” is equated with “greed.” The word implies to many an unrelenting seeking of gain, even at the expense and suffering of others. This reasoning implies that one man’s profit is derived from another man’s loss.

The State of Arizona is facing an unprecedented amount of debt—some $37 billion. That works out to roughly $6,000 of debt for every man, woman, and child in the state. The heap of debt is leading to calls for reform to keep Arizona solvent. Although various reforms, limits, and oversight may have merit, there is a simpler alternative: follow the state constitution’s debt limit.

Arizona’s legislative session is supposed to last only 100 days, but since it has a tendency to run a little longer than that, this year we are offering 152 ideas that will help close the state’s unprecedented budget deficit, get the government back to basics, and allow entrepreneurs to create new jobs to help pull us out of recession.

The annual Goldwater Institute Legislative Report Card considers how well Arizona legislators are fulfilling their constitutional obligation to uphold liberty. The report scores legislators on 305 votes across four categories: education, constitutional government, regulation, and tax and budget. The primary criterion is whether a vote for or against each bill expands or restricts liberty.

In an era of burgeoning federal government power, state constitutions are full of untapped potential; many provide stronger protection of individual freedoms than does the federal constitution. But realizing that potential requires recognizing its existence and assessing which state constitutions offer the best opportunities for securing the principles of limited government. To that end, this report ranks each state in the United States according to its constitutional commitment to the principles of limited government from a classical liberal perspective.