Much like the federal version, budgets at the state level are bloated. The fat needs trimming, yet few politicians seem able to muster up the will to do so.

For example, the Post-Gazette reports that “technically the [Pennsylvania] budget is balanced, critics said, but that balance depends on two shaky sources of revenue.” Those sources are $850 million in federal Medicaid funding that Congress hasn’t actually approved and a predicted 3.2 percent increase in tax revenue despite lower than expected tax revenue the past two years running.