Nonono, you misunderstand. You lower taxes to get a deficit and then reduce spending to get a surplus. Amateur.

If we need money, we have contingency funds. Responsible governance and all that. States don't have debt like the federal government has. States have bonding, sure, but bond service is part of the balanced budget. There is no such thing as a state with a deficit, only a state with a budget projection for a deficit. How do they arrive at these projections? Baseline budgeting. Basically, start with the last budget expenditure figure, add a fixed percentage, and your projected revenues from that figure is your budget surplus/deficit. THEN, you actually run a new budget - which is balanced because it has to be - and how you get there is up to you. Increase revenues, hold spending down, mixture of the two, etc.

Dayton's problem isn't that he raised taxes, he raised taxes for no reason. He didn't have some plan for most of that money, he simply wanted to raise taxes on "the rich." We didn't have a massive budget shortfall before he enacted it, it was quite small. He wasn't being "responsible," we were in fine shape. He was being petty.

States certainly have debt...California is in deep shit over it.

You don't have to spend every penny you make. It can be invested in a rainy day fund or put towards future spending needs. There isn't a problem when states make more money than they spend...there's a problem when they do the opposite, however.

*like the federal government has. States cannot run deficits on an annual basis. They have to balance the books every single year.

Funny how "balance the books" and "cannot run deficits" translates into "withhold money from school districts"

Funny how school districts take the largest piece of the pie, and their share is only growing.

I don't really understand this. What's the point here, I don't know about who uses 7.62/5.56.