Just like households who have had to reduce their budget in tough times, legislative Republicans did what we needed to ensure our revenues aligned with our expenditures and made a major dent in our structural imbalance over the last three years. The size of government grew by $3.7 Billion dollars from fiscal years 2004 to 2009. We cannot allow such a massive growth in government to occur again. Any increase in spending must correspond with growth in ongoing revenues or comparable cuts. Too often state budgets included new, permanent spending that were paid for with one-time revenues leaving the state with a higher structural imbalance and chronic cash deficits.