If they do, they find ways of making them not look like deficits.
That means they have take in sufficient revenue and limit expenses so as to balance their budget.
If there's a shortfall, they have two choices: Raise taxes or cut spending. If they cut spending, they have to look at contracts they've signed that can't easily be broken, as well as long-term consequences for the state. If legislators raise revenues, they have to worry about state competitiveness and being voted back into office.
They also have a couple of ethical questions. Is it right to hurt those least capable of taking care of themselves? After all, budget cuts are most likely going to affect the biggest items in the budget. In TX, that meant education and health care. (Cut everything else to $0/year a year ago, and there'd still have been big cuts to ed and HC.)
And the 2nd question: Is it right to vote against the opinion of the majority of voters? Should the state government--it's not quite a republic, after all--reflect majority opinion or the views, informed or not, of the legislators and governor?
We can complain about Norquist, but much of the problem is a kind of perfect storm.
With the stock market collapse, a lot of pensions were underfunded. Many were already underfunded. And baby boomers are starting to retire. Gotta make sure the pensions are funded--and if they're not, credit ratings suffer. Low credit rating = higher interest costs.
Property valuation downturns hit states hard. It's not the first time--but it's the worst. Ever. At the same time, unemployment was high, and stayed high for a long time. This is Great Depression kinds of time spans (if not severity), and that matters. A 6-month recession is a blip and can be finessed. Even a 12-month recession. But a recession with a significant job loss that lasts 4 years? You can't finesse that, even if you take Norquist and offer him up on the altar to Keynes as a blood sacrifice.
States also fund a lot more things these days. So when state spending is cut and cuts demand, it's a lot deeper. They insist on using every dime, pretty much, for long-term programs so every recession is a ball-breaker. Like I said, even in TX, notoriously "regressive," the two biggest line items, the things soaking up most of the budget, were education and health care.
In some cases the states or towns opted for stupid investment plans. Yeah, they were crappy plans they were offered--but nobody forced them to take them (any more than Greece was forced). You have professional planners that make crappy decisions, blame the planners. Caveat emptor and all that.
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