Louisiana 100+M surplus from 2017....

Politics today is about creating programs or taking existing programs and making them so large and cumbersome that all of the monies can never be accounted for.

Once this occurs you have career politicians as well as high ranking civil servants magically turn 175k salary into tens of millions of dollars. Nobody ask any questions from the ranks of politicians because they are all playing.

The old adage "follow the money" is not being applied to anyone, if it was a lot of politicians would be in jail. Those that have gotten fat have 99.9% tax dollars in their accounts, funneled in ingenious ways to enrich themselves.

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Surpluses are considered one-time (nonrecurring) revenue since you can't always count on having a surplus.

Even if the source (say income tax) was a recurring source.

We we don't really have surplus (yet). Technically we have "excess revenue" that if it isn't spent will become surplus after the books are closed on this year.

So they CAN spend that money on recurring expenses this year, the issue is you can't count on it being there next year.

And not one politician has the balls to call for amending it

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And that’s the issue. I understand the concept of the budget and the politically correct response, but I completely disagree with the premise.

I just want one time to see government use common sense.

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I don't want them being able to roll money from one year to the next. Set a budget and be done with it.

The balanced budget rule we have here in LA is one of the very few things we have that is good government. This goes hand in hand with it.

I do think, however, that we should never be allowed to directly spend a surplus. Require it to go either to rainy day fund, OR to unfunded liability.