In 1960 - when Dwight Eisenhower was still president and we hadn’t really started paying for four-lane highways, pollution control, and college access for kids other than upper-income white males – our Minnesota governments spent a lot less than they do now.

Although anti-tax conservatives don’t mention the context of all the progress and public good achieved, this increase in raw dollar expenditure is the favorite talking point employed by advocates of the so-called “Spending Accountability Amendment.”

This particular version of constitutional mischief – forms of which have been hawked by national conservative interest groups to many states over the last 20 years – basically would prevent the governor and Legislature from spending one dollar more in the next Minnesota state budget than was brought in during the previous two-year period.

In a recent op-ed and on the governor’s website, Gov. Tim Pawlenty estimates that if this amendment had been in place from 1960 on, we would have spent $22 billion less on state government. He argues correctly that his administration has slashed government since 2003, but dubiously asserts that we need the amendment to continue his brand of “discipline” after he is gone.

The alleged growth of about 10 percent a year from 1960 to 2003 is distorted by not allowing for government price inflators, population growth or state takeovers of local government costs. And Jeff Van Wychen, a sharp fiscal analyst for the group Minnesota 2020, puts the adjusted real growth figure at about 3.5 percent annually from 1960 through 2008.

So let’s just allow that there was real growth in our public sector between 1960 and 2000 (when we began to downsize income taxes, then state-and-local government budgets in Minnesota) and that government is in fact somewhat bigger and takes more of our private wealth and income than it did in those allegedly happier times.

Did we get anything for it? Here’s a very partial list of things our state and local governments did not do in the Happy Days era, when we had 3.4 million people, or about 1.7 million fewer than we do now.

• In state and local government jobs, we did not pay women wages and benefits comparable to men, and we made little effort across a broad spectrum to advance economic equality for girls and women.
• We had only the skeleton of our modern transportation and other public infrastructure systems. There were very few limited-access, four-lane highways, many roads and streets were unsafe for the speeds traveled, and many of our farm-to-market roads were still unpaved.
• We essentially did very little to protect our environment, had no Pollution Control Agency, and our rivers and lakes and groundwater were turning into open sewers.
• We did not manage our Twin Cities metropolitan area, and did not coordinate suburban growth, transportation, sewage and water, or parks and open space, between dozens of municipalities and seven counties.
• It’s a large “cost-driver” now, but we provided little or no financial help to grandmothers and grandfathers in nursing homes or in need of care, and did not supplement federal Medicaid programs with state dollars, because there were no federal Medicaid or Medicare programs.
• We did almost nothing to provide prenatal care or health care for low-income babies and their families or other safety-net support for impoverished and low-income households and their children.
• We educated far fewer students, had a much smaller percentage of our population in college, and provided only modest investments in community college and vo-tech systems, all of which are vital for today’s demanding workplace. And people of color were severely under-enrolled.
• We tended to shut away and exclude disabled kids and those with serious learning disabilities and spent almost nothing on special education. And our mental institutions for adults were by today’s standards, ghoulish, underfunded and unacceptable.
• Another major expense, now versus then, is state support for K-12 education. We did much less then as a state to equalize education opportunity across school districts. Back then, kids in communities with low property wealth did not have the same quality education as kids in affluent neighborhoods , something that now, with state support and after the 1971 Minnesota Miracle, we work hard to make happen.

So we spent $22 billion more over 50 years than we would have if we’d had a Spending Accountability Amendment in place.

Lucky for us. A very strong case can be made that because of this sizable public investment – not in spite of it – we are better off in most ways than we were in 1960.

This government spending that critics describe as “unsustainable” was accompanied by a steady rise in job and business growth, wealth creation, and average income in Minnesota. And until recently, we outperformed almost every other state on both economic and quality-of-life rankings and indicators.

Now we’re on this different path. And it’s not working out so well. Our Minnesota public sector did grow particularly fast between 1960 and 1980, and by the 1990s our Price of Government (an official measure of total state-local revenues as percent of income) amounted to about 17.5 percent of income. Many practical progressives believe this level was about right for our values and worked well for us.

The official Price of Government in 2008 stands at 15.5 percent. In other words, our state and local governments are struggling to do their jobs with about $5 billion less per year than they would have had if tax rates and the Price of Government had remained steady this decade. And on many fronts, our economy and quality-of-life indicators are slipping.

Instead of a Spending Accountability Amendment, maybe what we need is a Public Investment Amendment, so that that we regain a right-sized public sector and don’t regress all the way back to 1960.

Dane Smith is president of St. Paul-based Growth & Justice, a progressive research organization that focuses on economics and state-and-local budget issues. He also spent 30 years as a writer for the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press, where he delved into state, local and federal governments and politics.