If Nevada had implemented a Tax and Spending Control measure 15 years ago, the state would not be able to afford 3,740 public schoolteachers, health insurance for underprivileged children, professors at the state's universities and hundreds of millions of dollars in other services. And if TASC had been implemented in 1989, the state would be limited to $1.7 billion less than its current expenditures.

Those are the findings of two new analyses of the initiative, which would amend the Nevada Constitution to limit government growth. TASC opponents say the studies, one by local financial analysts and one by a Washington, D.C.-based group, demonstrate why the proposal is a bad idea.

"This is drastic stuff," said Danny Thompson, chairman of the anti-TASC coalition Nevadans for Nevada. "What it says is that TASC is a horrible idea. If you look at what the needs are, TASC would not allow us to grow to meet those needs."

TASC backers say looking at how the measure would have affected past spending is irrelevant.

"We don't want to look back," TASC Executive Director Bob Adney said. "TASC would not cut a single thing from the budget." It would merely limit future spending, he said.

Adney also pointed out that TASC allows growth beyond its limits if voters approve it. "If government feels they need more money, all they have to do is ask the people who pay the bills," he said. "Why is that such a horrible thing?"

TASC would limit increases in government spending to the sum of the rates of population growth and inflation unless voters approved an exception. Secretary of State Dean Heller has said he will issue a decision Friday as to whether the measure qualifies to be on November's ballot. However, there is likely to be a court battle between TASC and anti-TASC forces in the wake of Heller's decision.

The two TASC analyses took different years as their baseline. A look at the initiative by two local financial analysis firms, Applied Analysis and Hobbs, Ong and Associates, examined what would have happened if TASC had been put in place in 1989.

The firms are doing paid consulting on the effects of TASC for a number of local groups including Nevadans for Nevada, governments and business groups, they said.

In every biennium between 1989 and 2005, the state's spending exceeded what TASC's formula would have allowed, according to the analysis. By 2005, the gap between TASC-allowed spending and what the state actually spent would have been $1.74 billion -- 18 percent of the state's $9.69 billion 2005 budget.

The analysis prompts the question of how the state could have spent that much less, said Guy Hobbs, managing partner of Hobbs, Ong. "The next logical step is to ask, if we were spending this $1.7 billion less today, what, in all likelihood, would we be spending less on?" he said.

With education accounting for about 55 percent of current expenditures, he said, it stands to reason that education would get less funding. "If not, other areas, such as health care and prisons, would be disproportionately impacted, which is also not desirable," Hobbs said.

A second analysis of TASC, by the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, looks more closely at how the state could have come in line with TASC had it been previously implemented.

The center is a think tank that examines the effect of fiscal policy on low-income people.

If TASC took effect 15 years ago, in 1991, 2007 expenditures would be capped at $780 million less than their current level, the analysis found.

The Legislature could come in line with this cap, the center stated, if it cut 3,740 K-12 teachers; eliminated the Nevada Check-Up program that provides health care for 31,000 children; got rid of all the professors at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; let 1,300 inmates out of prison; eliminated state funding for economic development and tourism; and slashed $445 million in other programs.

The center's analysis said these cuts were based on the proportion of state money spent on each item such as education, health care and corrections.

Adney said such conclusions were misleading.

"Everyone likes to go back and look at what if, what if," he said. "But the fact is, it's not there. It wasn't there. It would start from here on out" if it passes.

"TASC does not cut anything. It allows government to grow, but with a ceiling," Adney added.

Despite his insistence on looking forward, backers of TASC have done their own analysis of the measure's effect had it been passed a decade ago. That breakdown found that current expenditures are $327 million higher than TASC would have allowed had it been implemented in 1995.

Jeremy Aguero, principal analyst for Applied Analysis, said the analyses are relevant because the past provides a good guide to what the future might hold.

"If TASC wouldn't have been the right thing for us 20 years ago, 10 years ago, how do we know that it's right for us to write it into the Constitution now, 10 years from now or 20 years from now?" Aguero said.

"It's true that the voters would have a say" in lifting the cap under TASC, he acknowledged. "But if you want only inflation and population growth to be the limit, we would be spending substantially less."