In Texas, politicians have proven themselves no exception to the rule: give ’em a penny, they’ll take a dollar; give ’em a dollar, they’ll take your wallet.

But there is some novelty in the Lone Star State, a new way to control politicians.

The issue at hand is over-spending. A Texas group, Citizens Lowering Our Unfair Taxes — that is, CLOUT — has sued the state of Texas for unconstitutional spending. In a series of court victories, CLOUT has gotten courts to agree: taxpayers have legal standing to challenge state spending.

A motion for an injunction, preventing the state from spending $931 million while the case is in court, failed. Still, the judge is letting the case move forward to trial.

Now the suit moves to discovery, with CLOUT’s attorneys preparing to depose members of the Legislative Budget Board to explain how Texas politicians go about deciding how to spend money, some of which they are not supposed to spend.

If this works for Texas, it should be exported.

Sheila Weinberg, head of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, tells me that most governments “throughout the country” neither honestly balance their budgets nor report meaningful financial data. The actual number crunching gets done by those who have, as she puts it, “vested interests in the outcome of the budget calculations.” She adds, “This allows elected officials to use political math to circumvent the intent of budget laws.”

Government accountants must use honest numbers. If they don’t, well, we’ll sue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.