“There's Wisconsin, for example, which finished 2009 with a $2.7 billion deficit despite a technical requirement that the state balance its budget. Wisconsin's budget shortfalls have grown in every year but one since 1999, and its deficit per capita is four times that of California, according to an article last week by Todd Berry, a budget expert based in Madison.”
Notice how he treats The Wisconsin legal requirement for a balanced budget as a mere technical requirement. The question that should be asked there is: Why is Governor Doyle not in jail!
As long as we treat the legal requirements to balance budgets as mere “technical requirements”, we will not have balanced budgets.