On the recordJuly 19, 2011
Senator Alexander raises such a valid point. In the State of Nebraska we don't have any road debt either. If we wanted to pave a mile of highway we had to have the money in the bank or it did not get done. The other advantage of that is when the economy started to lift, we did not have to pay back all that money we had borrowed. We were ready to take off. So I would have to imagine in Tennessee, like Nebraska, our economic recovery was just much easier to achieve. I had the pleasure of serving as Governor of Nebraska when Senator Hoeven was Governor of North Dakota. The State of North Dakota is often recognized as one of the best managed States in the country. It has its fiscal house in order. It runs a surplus with some of the lowest unemployment rates of any State in the country. Yet they suffered through some of the same problems we had after the dot-com collapse. Could the Senator talk to us a little bit about how the balanced budget provisions in his constitution required him and the legislators to manage the State?
