New Hampshire’s economy is the best in New England because for years we have managed to live, more or less, by former Gov. Mel Thomson’s maxim: “Low taxes are the result of low spending.” How long, though, can Granite Staters trust that their leaders will remain committed to that rule of governance?

We have been really fortunate to have kept the New Hampshire Advantage for as long as we have. If we want to pass it on to our children’s children, we need to reinforce it with further restraints on politicians, who might tell the people one thing and then do another once elected.

That is hardly a far-fetched scenario, as anyone who pays any attention to politics will recognize. Politicians constantly pledge to spend little and tax even less, only to announce after gaining office that they are being forced by circumstances to do the opposite. We saw that with Republicans in Washington during the George W. Bush years and with Democrats here in New Hampshire in the last few legislative sessions. It happens all the time.

That is why CACR 6, up for a vote in the Senate on Wednesday, is most needed. It would amend the New Hampshire Constitution to require a three-fifths majority vote of legislators “to pass a new tax or license fee or to increase a tax or license fee that has been levied by the state, or to authorize the issuance of state bonds.”

This would not prohibit tax increases. It would make them much more difficult to pass. It also would ensure that any new or increased taxes would have broad support. In 2010, legislators slipped an income tax on Limited Liability Company owners into the state budget at the last minute. That budget contained other controversial taxes, such as a new tax on gambling winnings, that along with the LLC tax were repealed the next year after the public learned more about them. This amendment would reduce those kinds of controversies. To increase the people’s tax burden, three-fifths of their representatives and senators will have to agree to it.

That’s a protection not only from excessive taxation, but from duplicitous legislators. The good legislators we have at the moment should pass it to keep their successors in line.