According to Keith Hennessey, “When the President chose a partisan path in his speech, he pushed the real debate behind closed doors. This is now a debate among House and Senate Democrats.”

Sounds a lot like the North Carolina budget, and as we’ve seen from the latest report from the State Controller’s Office, debates based on a single fact can have the wrong fact. Through the summer, projected spending for FY2009 was $20.3 billion. A report from the Office of State Budget and Management in August showed spending at $19.65 billion, an amount now confirmed by the Controller’s Office. Would fiscally responsible Democrats (you know who you are) have supported a billion-dollar-a-year sales tax hike, a high earner’s tax, and $20.4 billion in spending if they knew state agencies managed to spend $650 million less than that in the year just finished?

Do Democratic state legislators and governors recognize the potentially devastating effect on state budgets of planned Medicaid expansions in the health care plans before Congress? Do they have a voice behind Washington’s closed doors or just those in Raleigh and other state capitals?