But from an economics or financial management perspective, you'd say of course you want to start looking out way beyond one year. |
Every new dollar coming in is already spent and then some. I liken it to a guy who gets a raise and then gets home to see the bills just keep piling up. |
Increased tax revenue is good news for the states. But the bad news is that things like Medicaid, that you have to pay for, still cost a fortune. |
Overall, as part of the state budget, it's not huge at this point, but we certainly expect that to change. |
People really have to be careful. It's because revenue went down so far and we're very cautious about future projections. It doesn't necessarily mean that happy days are here again. |
Personal saving rates are minimal, and the federal government is deeply in deficit. But the states are putting money back into their rainy-day funds. |
The drop in revenue is the worst since data have been collected -- since World War II. |
The memory of the really bad downturn we had from 2002 to 2004 is strong. And there's always Medicaid. And a lot of states want to build up their rainy-day funds in case the economy goes soft again. So all of that is going to limit somewhat the momentum for new programs. |
They really are at a point where the easy stuff to do has been done, so now the choice has become between tax increases and fairly stringent cuts in programs. |
We don't want to get too euphoric about the situation. |