When something is heading in the wrong direction, a course correction is needed. Even if the Taxpayer Bill of Rights won’t rectify all the problems with taxes and spending in the state, it is a much-needed course correction.

If, after it is passed, voters find the state is still off target, they can enact another course correction. But job and business woes, soaring food stamp enrollment and the migration of youth from the state can’t continue alongside increasing public expenditures much longer.

Maine just doesn’t have too many more pockets of wealth to sell, such as lottery proceeds, or payments to defer for close to a decade, such as those to the hospitals. Spending, as under TABOR, has to be controlled or the payment deferment, borrowing and bonding – sometimes referred to as the great Maine shell game – will continue. No other course correction has been proposed.

Do people know what that means? If we don’t make a correction soon, our stagnant economy is going to go over the Great Falls.

Margaret Matthews, Auburn