Well...at least Alaska (and Gov Palin) were wise enough to stash revenue surpluses away....with 7 bil. in savings....they can get out of their 1.3 bil. shortfall without much pain
Unlike Florida with our RINO Gov. Crist....who managed to pee away the revenue surplus when the housing market was up,,,and sales tax revenues from real estate sales was plentyful. Now Florida has a deficit and no way to recoup without massive cuts and/or higher taxes.
Will gladly trade Alaska for governors...will take Palin for Crist...and throw in Mel Martinez too...with another “RINO to be named later”
Alaska’s financial problem may not be limited to one year; right now it might be structural. Alaska can dip into reserves this year, and maybe next year, but in three or four years the reserves will be gone. Palin will have to take a hard look at next year’s budget, but I have confidence she will handle the situation well.
There are probably 40 other states that wish they had Alaska’s problem. There are a lot states that are seriously upside down and don’t have any reserves to fall back on. They are in a situation where years of structural deficits in the time of plenty have now put them in the hole.
New York State’s shortfall is by far larger than that. We’re almost broke, thanks to the democrats and rinos we’ve had for governors. Argghhh.
Virginia managed to hang on to part of it’s rainy-day fund, although the Democratic governor underfunded it, and also tried to tap it LAST year so he could increase spending.
But if things don’t turn around quick, we’ll use up our surplus, even though the last two democratic administrations have raised our taxes I think over 2 billion dollars. They of course doubled spending to use up all the money — but not on the roads we needed.
The deficit would be fixed overnight if the Gov would just roll back all the spending increases she put in place her first two years.
And get the money back from a certain Canadian company and we would have a 1/2 billion surplus.
Funny how all those actions (and not words) mack such a difference.