What's most amazing about the state's $38 billion budget deficit isn't that politicians spent more money than they took in -- they're good at that -- but that they still think they haven't spent enough.

Thus the movement on the part of some Sacramento legislators, most notably Democratic Sen. Richard Alarcon of Van Nuys, to unleash a voter initiative that would undo much of Proposition 13.

Alarcon and fellow would-be tax hikers have set their sights on a key component of the landmark 1978 voter initiative that requires a two-thirds electoral supermajority to approve sales-tax and bond measures. They'd like to see the constitutional threshold lowered to a more easily obtained 55 percent.

Anything that makes it easier for them to raise your taxes!

But there's a reason why voters passed Prop. 13 a quarter- century ago, one that's no less valid today: Politicians are experts at wrangling ever more money out of the taxpayers, then spending it recklessly.

The supermajority requirement for for raising taxes is a noble effort to protect taxpayers from their leaders' voracious appetites. Without it, the state's tax situation would be even more onerous, and its government even less efficient.

That's because going into a bond election, the politicians have all the cards. Their own, voter-alienating cynicism ensures low public turnout, thereby making it easier to skew results by ramping up participation among the few constituencies who stand to gain most.

Then, they raise massive campaign war chests among all the contractors, unions and other special interests that stand to gain most from the proposed new projects. With those funds, they can pepper the airwaves with misleading commercials, knowing that their grass-roots opposition will never have enough cash to respond in kind.

The supermajority provision of the state constitution -- thanks to Prop. 13 -- is all the protection that taxpayers have. No wonder the politicians and special interests, hungrier than ever for more money, are going after it.

To be sure, the state needs to update its infrastructure, but it should reduce its bureaucracy to pay the bill.

Taxpayers will need to stand up strong against this assault, or else they'll be paying for it for decades to come.