You get what you pay for. If you don't invest in the things that matter, you won't get good returns.

This is especially true of the goods and services government provides. Education, health care, and police and fire protection are just a few of these important services. These services, despite their central role in keeping Wisconsin a functioning state, are currently at risk for losing state and local funding due to a Republican-sponsored initiative called TABOR.

Investing can be a painful process — it requires sacrificing in the short run in order to make gains in the long run. This idea has made Republicans queasy for decades. They refuse to admit that in order to provide road maintenance, snow removal, social services and quality schools, the public will have to pitch in.

And yes, that means we all have to pay taxes. Without taxes we wouldn't have teachers in public schools, our trash wouldn't get picked up on a weekly basis and the UW System couldn't be the top-ranked institution it is today.

Sen. Glenn Grothman and Rep. Frank Lasee want to amend Wisconsin's constitution to include limits on government revenue and spending. While a cap on taxes might sound appealing, real world application of this idea would have disastrous consequences for Wisconsinites. This proposal, TABOR, is modeled after a policy in Colorado that has failed miserably since its inception in 1992.

The negative impact TABOR has had on Colorado's ability to provide for its citizens is alarming. According to a report produced by the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, Colorado has slid down the national rankings in a number of areas, from education to health care, in the decade since TABOR's implementation. Higher education appropriations ratings per capita student plummeted from 31st to 47th nationally, while health insurance coverage fell from 21st to 36th. Colorado's Morgan Quitno rating for livability dropped from eighth to 23rd, while its overall health rating fell behind 18 other states, from ninth to 27th.

The decline of Colorado's education and health care services can be directly linked to the constitutional constraints placed on Colorado lawmakers in terms of government revenue and spending. Tax increases are limited by a formula that links inflation and population growth; this formula is one of the main reasons that Colorado's TABOR has been so detrimental.

The goods and services that are paid for by taxes cost more than many of the goods and services provided by non-governmental entities. That's because many of the services the government provides require special training and education. This is problematic because TABOR limits spending on services like education based on the overall economy, instead of assessing how much is needed to implement successful programs.

In some sectors of the economy, new technologies have made jobs faster and more efficient, thereby driving down the cost of production. This can't be the case with education, however; unless we start replacing teachers with robots, the cost of providing a quality education won't be driven down.

TABOR wreaked so much havoc in Colorado that citizens actually voted to suspend the program, letting the government keep $3.7 billion in tax refunds. After they realized that capping taxes meant capping their opportunities to provide a sound education to their kids, adequate health care to their neediest and other vital services to their population, Colorado citizens decided it wasn't worth it.

Wisconsin is a good place to live right now — our insurance coverage is ranked seventh in the nation, childhood immunization is eighth, we're seventh in preventing high school dropouts and we're 22 spots higher on the national list in providing appropriations for higher education than Colorado, according to the WCCF study. Let's avoid making Colorado's mistake in the first place and reject TABOR.

Liz Sanger is a senior majoring in violin performance and English.