Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"The issue is that when the economy is going strong and growing, often times - due to how our government raises tax revenue - often times government tax revenues grow more, and that allows government to use that new revenue to develop new programs, expand existing programs, etc. Then, however, when a recession hits and government revenues slow or actually go down, government can't fund everything previously committed to; therefore, there's a budget gap. Now what some people say is, 'What we need to do is limit spending by the government on the upside of the economy.' And there are several ideas in this area. One is to, for example, limit spending this year to the revenue that was received last year. Another would be to limit spending increases to inflation plus population growth. And then a more generous one would be to limit government spending to some percentage of the private economy. Then if, during the upswing of the economy, excess revenues - that is, revenues above spending - were to arise, you would put those revenues into a reserve, a so-called rainy day fund, to be used during a recession. Now these ideas have been around a long time. Some states have tapped into them. The big problem is, of course, it takes discretion away from elected officials, and it sort of puts our elected officials into a straight jacket. They can't respond to emergencies or priorities that as they see fit. But we'll likely have this up and down with government revenue problem well into the future."