Wishing upon a Money Tree

It has now been reported that if the New Jersey budget is not passed by July 1, the State government will be shut down until it is passed. Same is the situation with New York, where they are passing interim budgets on a weekly basis since the budget deadline is past more than a month. This is due to the fact that the governors and the legislatures have different ideas of how to balance the budget. The governors want to implement harsh cuts in spending, but the legislature are reluctant to that since they have to answer to their constituents who are already hard pressed due to the budget cuts and economy.Apart from this, the budgets are required to be balanced as per the states constitution. So what gives?

The legislature wants to keep the programs and want to raise taxes but they don’t have the money or the votes to fight out the governors. It is just a dilemma that during this recession, the people want more programs to remain intact but the money is just not there. Increasing taxes are being raised but if you raise them too much, people with the means will try to either evade them or they will throw out the representatives who have voted for the increase in taxes.