Where did I say anything about running a surplus? I simply talked about cutting the $800 million and running a balanced budget, and not allocating natural resource royalties to be used as part of the budget simply because of the boom/bust cycle that our economy tends to have. Surely that is easy enough to understand.
On top of that, I would promote outside audits of government spending to make sure the money is being spent as efficiently as possible. If you have a $5 billion dollar surplus, invest it in something like carbon capture. If you don't, fine....wait till the next boom.
The Heritage Fund should be something that is stored away for times like 2008, when revenues drop like crazy, and you don't want to cut spending because of the long-term problems it causes. You use whatever you need to keep everything going, and when the economy gets better, you start saving that money again.
But simply spending it all because they need votes? Rather lame approach to governing. Lame and lazy. If they would at least ATTEMPT to balance the budget. But no, gotta buy those votes to keep the machine turning.
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